If you’re a truck driver, you probably know how hard it is to find places to park your truck! The difficulty of finding truck parking is serious enough that it’s causing some truckers to quit the business– and that’s contributing to the ongoing driver shortage problem.
Time is Money
It can be so frustrating. You’re looking for a place to park, and it takes almost an hour– ridiculous, right? In trucking, time is money. Time spent looking for parking means less money in a driver’s pocket at the end of the day. A moving truck is a profitable truck. A truck looking for parking? That’s wasting time.
Parking is, ultimately, a cost of doing business; It’s up to the truck stop industry to deal with the problem. More parking needs to become available. Improvements to infrastructure are truly needed. Is the federal government going to help make it happen? Probably not… What about the states? They’re wondering where to get the money to make the needed changes.
Possible Solutions
What’s a possible solution? What if taxes on diesel and gasoline were increased and then used to fund repairs to crumbling infrastructure? What if the truck stop industry started putting their profits into upgrades– better lighting, repaved lots, more truck parking spots made available, etc.? What if major carriers invested in providing more parking spots for their trucks?
Basically, in today’s economy there are more trucks on the road than there are parking spots and infrastructure available to serve all of them when needed. Demand has exceeded supply. Because there’s a lack of parking, that leads to “wasted time” and less productivity. Also, drivers are forced to park in places they shouldn’t– in unauthorized or undesignated parking spots. Drivers want to be safe and legal, but it’s not always possible when there’s a lack of proper parking spots available in the places they need to park.
The trucking industry plans to move more and more freight in the years to come. Where are all those trucks going to park? The powers-that-be better figure out this issue quickly, because it’s only going to get worse if there’s not a coordinated effort to fix the problem.
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