Which law should I break today? Trip planning and parking.

Dump valve on the rear axle makes life much easier.

 

Pay to park if you have to, shouldn't be more than 5 times a month.

 

Sometimes even paying to park doesn’t guarantee a spot. If the employees won’t move someone that didn’t pay.

 

This, as a retired driver, is something we never had to put up with. We either ran around the clock, or any number of exit/entrance ramps would "knock the edge" off. I'm not sure what to tell you, it's a huge and growing problem. You have to think outside the box, go where many don't think of going. I camped out in a rural Burger King after they closed. Sometimes pickup or delivery places may let you camp out, Walmart is almost toast, thanks to the pigs, but abandoned factories or parking lots, but with that, you stand out , and don't have the "safety of numbers" like in a truck stop. It's a dilly of a pickle, for sho'.

 

It's a luxury , but smaller mom and pop motels will let you pay to park for $20-30 night.

 

For me, I try to park at my delivery. Now sometimes that isn't always an option. Parking is only an issue for drivers that truck stops and rest areas solely to sleep. I'll use those, Walmarts if allowed, abandoned lots, on ramps, side streets, anywhere that can fit 63 feet of diesel power. Since you're new to the game, you'll need to download trucker path. It'll have truck stops, it'll show all kinds of parking options and other truckers will get on there and tell you what's up. Also, it helped me to get one of those small truck stop books. It helped me to learn where all the different truck stops are. Utilize Google maps and put it in satellite view to look around the area you're going to..you may find a side street. Most importantly, until you get familiar with all the spots around the country, don't drive until you're all the way out of time. Since you're learning, drive about 8 or 9 hrs so that you can give yourself time to find a spot. As you get more familiar with the highways and stopping points, then the avenue opens up for you to cut it closer on your 11.

 

Getting caught illegal parking is better than caught driving well over HOS. The better plan is to treat not finding a parking spot like the end of the world, so you park earlier or farther from the spot where your HOS exactly run out. The newbie mindset is too often "I'll just break this rule" when it should be I should start earlier or do something less convenient so I don't brake rule A or rule B. If illegal parking or illegal driving is seen as regrettable but common, you won't have a clean record for long.

Trip plan at 50 mph. Have 2 good ideas where you will park before you start the day, and every time something during the day delays your arrival at your expected parking recalculate and maybe pick a closer parking destination. The northeast and big cities you may have to park before dark or park 60-90 minutes away. I bought paid parking when I was going to scarce parking areas because every company I worked for reimbursed that expense. I routinely parked far away from my A.M. delivery at a place I knew would have parking by the time I arrived at it rather than driving 1-2 hours later into the afternoon or evening into a more urban area and then hoping I could park a big truck and trailer at an abandoned car wash or closed store and not get robbed, ticketed, or towed. The world doesn't owe you a parking space. You owe the world parking in a legal parking space. Some drivers think any truck sized piece if ground is a good place to park, just because they are tired or they want to be 3 inches from the customer when they wake up. Bad strategy.

Use TruckerPath app to keep an eye on parking where you are going. It takes some time to interpret what TP is telling you about parking availability. TP doesn't have sensors in the ground that know when parking is available or not. TP gets updates from humans with TP app saying there is Much, Some, No parking if those humans decide to submit a report. In the worst areas some idiot is constantly submitting "Lots of available" or "No available" parking reports every 5 minutes for their own demented purpose. Look at the parking locations around that suspicious full/empty report. You will eventually know The Dirty Boot Truck stop ALWAYS or NEVER has parking. Remember a lean record is not having a good reason for every ticket you have, it happens by adjusting your behavior to not have the ticket.

 

Your job is to get good at backing. NOBODY likes backing into tight spots until they get good at it. Avoiding backing is how you make your life more difficult in other areas. Once you get good at backing you have more legal options. That was one thing I loved about tanker. Most tankers east of the rockies are only 48 ft long and they have no tailswing. There are lots of places where I arrived late to a crowded truck stop and could park in the last open space because that space was too tight for 53 ft or low-skill drivers or required a blindside back. With electric moving mirrors and no tailswing, blindside backing is just slower and less convenient than sightside backing.

Whatever is difficult or uncomfortable is what you should focus on for improvement. The backing fairy doesn't just drop glitter on you while you sleep. You get batter at backing by backing every day several times. EVERYTIME you stop the truck for any reason, you back it into a parking spot. If you back only once per day, if there are no other options, you will retire before you are any good at it. Back 3 or 4 times per day every time you stop and you will be good at it in months. Life isn't eating ice cream in a recliner until you retire.

 

That's the "life hack" for parking. In special circumstances I've started at 1 am. I routinely woke up at 4 am to shower, eat breakfast, get started so I could park at 3 pm 500 miles away.

 

In the West parking on ramps is more acceptable in more states than east of I-35. Many states it is illegal to park on the ramp and some of those states don't enforce it and other states enforce the carp out of that law. LOTS of traffic noise and rocking the truck when parking on ramps, not to mention the chance of getting run into or side-swiped while sleeping.