Lack of truck parking costly for drivers: ATRI

by Truck News

ARLINGTON, Va. – A lack of truck parking is costing professional drivers in the US an average of US$4,600 in lost wages each year, as they spend time looking for parking spots that otherwise could have gone towards revenue-generating driving.

That’s a finding from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), which asked drivers to keep a Truck Parking Diary as part of its study. The study was conducted over 14 days of driving and represents 4,700 unique parking stops.

The study also found drivers looking for parking between 4 p.m. and midnight ran into a confluence of challenges, including increased search times and parking spaces taken up by non-commercial vehicles, forcing truckers to park on roadway shoulders or highway ramps.

On average, drivers spent 56 minutes of revenue drive time per day looking for parking spots. That means drivers are losing about 9,300 revenue-earning miles a year.

The study also found drivers using electronic logging devices (ELDs) were more likely than those using paper logs to spend over 30 minutes looking for a place to park.

“The lack of available truck parking creates a lot of stress for me and my fellow drivers,” said Stephanie Klang, a professional driver for CFI.  “And, as ATRI’s diary research shows, it’s a number of things – from lack of capacity, concerns over running out of hours, time limitations on parking in public rest areas and customers not letting us park in their facilities – that all combine to make this a perennial issue for us.”

You can download a copy of this report on ATRI’s website at www.atri-online.org.


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  • I’m a independent trucker. SAFE Truck Parking when off duty in the state of California is almost impossible. With the price of Carb Compliant trucks, the safety of protecting your investment and the regulations requiring your vehicle to be in safety compliance, a lot of lost time mental anguish and money is being wasted. The FEDERAL US DOT need to get involved with this issue and make all cities allocate trucker friendly short time and storage Truck Parking places.

  • It’s time for fed,state,prov gov’ts to make laws requiring shipper/recievors to allocate a percentage of trucks on property safe haven parking. It’s the only reasonable, efficient, inexpensive answer.