Lack of Truck Parking: The Search for a Safe Space to Park

As America’s highways remain filled with moving freight, when the time comes to rest professional truck drivers routinely make their search for a safe, legal place to park. With truck volumes growing and parking capacity failing to keep pace, drivers are often forced to choose between violating federal hours-of-service regulations, parking in unsafe or unauthorized locations, or even continuing to drive while fatigued. The shortage of truck parking has evolved from a driver inconvenience into a critical long-haul trucking issue — one that affects highway safety, operational efficiency, driver retention, and ultimately supply chain efficiency.

According to ATRI’s “Critical Issues in the Trucking Industry” 2023 report, the second biggest issue for drivers was the lack of available truck parking. "Every person in this room knows where you're going to put your head down tonight and you know you're going to be safe,” says Rebecca Brewster, President and Chief Operator Officer for ATRI. “That same luxury is not afforded to the men and women who deliver for us each and every day and that's an issue we've got to change."

While this has been a long-standing challenge for trucking, solutions are materializing in the Women In Trucking (WIT) community. In fact, WIT has been helping to bring to light this growing issue in recent years through various articles, content, conference sessions, and even a Truck Parking Solutions Guide in 2024. Access Resources here.

Some WIT corporate members are addressing the issues head-on. For example, Truck Parking Club was specifically created to help directly solve the problem, and as evidence of its progress its network of reservable truck parking recently surpassed 5,000 locations nationwide. For this one company, reaching such a critical scale is imperative to success.

A Safety Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight

Truck Parking Club’s marketplace now offers more than 80,000 reservable truck parking spaces across 49 states, built not through new construction but by utilizing unused space on private property. These locations are made up of warehouses, trucking terminals, self storage facilities, truck repair shops and more.

Drivers from 93 of the top 100 fleets have parked at Truck Parking Club locations, helping 100,000’s of drivers get safely, legally and efficiently parked.

"We've created a new way to add truck parking capacity at scale and at speed, without waiting on construction, leasing, or new infrastructure dollars," says Evan Shelley, Founder and CEO of Truck Parking Club. "Hundreds of thousands of drivers have already parked with us, and we’re actively partnering with everyone from the largest fleets to independent owner-operators to help them use Truck Parking Club to improve efficiency and deliver real value to both drivers and carriers.”

The truck parking shortage isn't just an inconvenience, he notes, it's a public safety issue. Federal data shows 457 fatal crashes and more than 41,000 total crashes annually involve large trucks on highway ramps and shoulders. “Drivers aren't choosing these spots,” says Shelley, “they park there because they have no alternative.”

The shortage has persisted for more than a decade, driven by limited supply, regulatory barriers to develop new parking, and the high cost of traditional construction, which runs $100,000 to $200,000 per space and takes years to complete.

For reference, it would cost approximately $8 billion to build the capacity Truck Parking Club has in its network, Shelley notes. Truck Parking Club's model sidesteps those barriers by activating existing private property:

• Unlocking existing capacity on private land
• Enabling real-time reservations through a digital marketplace
• Adding supply in days, not years, without public infrastructure dollars

Built With American Small Business

Truck Parking Club's 5,000-plus locations are owned and operated by small businesses in every corner of the American economy: trucking companies, warehouses, repair shops, tow yards, self-storage operators, CDL schools, hotels, stadiums, and more. For these business operators, unused space becomes income. For the supply chain, it becomes capacity. For local economies, it becomes foot traffic from drivers who eat, fuel up, and spend in the towns where they park.

Shelley points out that he founded the company in November 2022, and Truck Parking Club has grown into the largest network of reservable truck parking in the country in less than four years. The company's growth has accelerated at every milestone: 366 days to reach the first 100 locations, just 81 days to go from 4,000 to 5,000.

The company aims to double to 10,000 locations by the end of 2026, adding roughly 580 new locations per month, or about 19 per day.

Related Articles:

• Truck Parking Crisis: Defining the Problem, Measuring the Impact, Driving Solutions
• Quality of Life Themes Dominate ATRI’s Recent List of Critical Trucking Issues
• WIT Supports Trump Administration’s Truck Parking Program
• Top Trucking Concerns: The Economy, Truck Parking, BEVs
• Park It: Lack of Truck Parking Causes Major Headaches for Drivers

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