6. Truck parking remains a concern for fleets

Dec. 17, 2013

After debuting on the ATRI Top Industry Issues survey for the first time ever in 2012, Truck Parking climbed two spots to the sixth position in 2013. In July 2013 a new HOS requirement for drivers to take a 30-minute break before continuing to drive after eight hours on-duty went into effect.

With that new requirement and the changes to the 34-hour restart provisions, the demand for truck parking likely increased. Along with a growing economy, these factors explain this issue’s rise in importance on the 2013 survey. Overall, this issue is ranked first, second, or third by 21% of survey respondents. When isolating the subset of respondents that are truck drivers, the issue ranks much higher (third) with 40% of driver respondents ranking it as the first, second, or third most important issue. A lack of truck parking can sometimes force a driver to choose between driving beyond available HOS to find safe parking, or parking in an undesignated, unsafe, and/or illegal location.

Proposed Strategies:

a) Support and encourage investment in new truck parking facilities and work to reopen closed public rest facilities. This strategy is the overwhelming favorite of survey respondents, with 77.5% selecting it as their preferred strategy (the most support behind any strategy in the Top Ten list). The most straightforward solution to a truck parking shortage is to invest in new facilities and reopen those facilities that were shuttered during the recession due to budget cutbacks.

b) Educate the public sector on the safety consequences resulting from closing public parking facilities. One of the most tragic and high-profile examples of the safety consequences of inadequate truck parking is the murder of truck driver Jason Rivenburg in 2009 while he was parked in an abandoned gas station as he waited to make a delivery the next morning. Many in the industry believe that state and local officials must be educated on the importance of building new truck parking facilities so that tragedies like this can be avoided. This strategy is preferred by 17.9% of respondents.

c) Research the role and value of real-time truck parking information availability and truck parking reservation systems. Providing drivers with better information on the availability of truck parking is one way that drivers could avoid a dangerous parking situation. Recent advances in technology may make real-time parking information readily available to drivers. ATRI is currently working on multiple demonstration projects to develop and field test real-time truck parking availability notification systems.