The Carrier Playbook
📰 The Report: With only 1 legal parking space for every 6 – 11 trucks, the average driver burns ~58mins/day and $5,500/year finding parking
🔎 The Reason: Only 3% of spaces are available to the public, multi-stop days create mismatches, and trailer pools swell demand
💬 The Response: Plan parking like fuel stops: lock spots early and use telematics + live availability apps to beat HOS cutoffs
The Supply Gap is Real
Truck parking is chronically short: an estimated 4.2 million drivers vs ~697,000 adequate parking spaces, roughly a 1:6, with some studies approximating 1:11. This imbalance forces ~58mins/day of search time and burns $5,500/year per driver.
Beyond the Truck-to-Parking Ratio
Despite the U.S. offering 23.4 million “legal” parking spaces – areas with minimum safety characteristics that a truck has permission to park in – only 3% are publicly accessible. The rest are locked up in private yards, terminals, and DCs. Trucks will also make multiple stops in any given day, each of a different type (bathroom, meal, full rest, etc.tc), so the wrong spot is no spot at all. Fleets also have 1.1x to 1.6x as many trailers as tractors because trailers double as storage space, pushing spillover into scarce public spaces. The shortage in parking is not purely a matter of truck-to-parking ratio.
Treat Parking Like a Planned Resource
While the root cause is infrastructure, carriers can take action to alleviate the problem. Start by planning it: use telematics and route planning to match breaks to safe lots, tie in parking directories with live availability, and reserve before HOS gets tight. Make it policy by add parking to the pre-trip checklist and create a vetted list of safe lots by lane.