You can't park here!

TA in Dallas off of I-20 has pay to park. Memphis Petro has pay to park. Just two of many .
It used to be common to pay to park, then it began to disappear. Now back on the rise due to stupid and considerate drivers, dumping pee jugs, leaving trash, leaving dropped trailers for way too long. A real jerk is the dog owner that has to walk their dog near the restaurant in the landscaped grass area to let it poop and then not cleanup behind it. When I see that I call them on it.
Some get up set but I stand my ground.
I don't understand how some people can be like that. It is private property and it is done at nearly every place a truck goes. shippers, receivers and truck stops, shopping centers and 99% of the time it is trash from a truck drivers, Or to be more exact a steering wheel holder. These same jerks will use a windshield squeegee to wash a truck at the fuel island. I carry my own squeegee so I don't get grease or fuel on my glass due to a brain dead jerk before me..

 

Hi Gordon, you and I think the same way (how refreshing) I saw a woman who spilled gas on the side of her car once, and grabbed the windshield squeegee, and began "washing" the side of her car with it. I couldn't contain myself, and said, "what are you doing, did you ever wash your windows with that after someone did that"? The look on her face was priceless!!

 

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Even if you go with a heavy reefer with tailgate, side-doors, two-zone system, steel wheels, etc., you're looking at a 16,000lb. trailer

The tractor is not going to be more than 20,000lbs, if it is, the company is doing something wrong in how they're specing out a truck for OTR work.

So, you have 36,000lbs. sitting there, across 18 different tires. The tires carrying the heaviest load per tire when you're empty is going to be your steer axle, maybe 9,000lbs at best, so, that's 4,500lbs. per tire.

So, you have 27,000lbs. spread across the rest of the 16 tires, or about 1700lbs per tire.

Now, something small, like a Honda Civic, which weighs in about 4,000lbs, will carry about 1,000lbs a tire, although, probably a bit heavier, like the truck, on the steer axle. However, a 7,000lb. SUV like the Ford Expedition, which no one bats an eye at someone parking in the lot, is carrying near 2,000lbs. per tire, equaling the truck, less the steer axle.

So, is the wear and tear really all that much higher? I don't think so.

Not to mention, the width of the truck tire is wider, spreading the weight over a wider surface area, and the track of the truck is wider, spreading the weight over a wider area.

 

Hi Colorado, wait a sec, the problem isn't so much weight on a particular tire, it's the fact of dragging tandem axles (especially spread axles) that do the most damage.

 

The empty weight on my steer is 12,000 lbs and loaded 11.700 lbs Freightliner Century 240 in wheel base, 6 door aluminum headache rack and two aluminum storage boxes one ea side of cab and a useless APU. NO chains and binders or tarps.

 

What kind of civics are you seeing that weigh 4,000 lbs?

And an empty truck puts a HUGE load onto the ground compared to a car. It doesn't matter what your tires are weighted for, that's why your truck and trailer call for a specific air pressure in those tires. What matters is the point where the tire touches the ground. That's where the entire load of your truck and trailer is. This is why if you walk along the front of the fuel island, the road goes up and down, yet car parking lots don't.

Your tire pressure is to even the load across the body of the truck. That's why your drive and tandem axles tend to be around the same weight when the entire load is in front of the trailer. So even though your front axle might be 9,000 lbs in weight, some of the weight from that half of the truck is pushed to the back, bobtail, you'd be closer to 9,000 lbs on every axle. The reason your drive axle jumps so high is that some of the weight of your trailer is pushed into the front axle.

You weigh 36,000lbs, but the force you put into the ground is WAY more than 36,000lbs. Force and weight are different. A truck will destroy that parking lot, like they do to every parking lot, even the truck stops if you pay attention to the ground.

And the guy who mentioned putting up a no trucks sign... Why? Shouldn't you just assume that you're not allowed to park on private property?

 

I park where I want and I will call the federal marshmallows if they try to move me.

 

remember the idiot at Love's that was gonna call the law because they woke him up because he was parked like an ### ####.
Priceless.....

 

Wrong wrong wrong.

20,000 pounds sitting across roughly 1.5 parking spots if you're bobtail. The steers alone weigh roughly the same as 12 cars, and that's just 2 tires so I don't see why you object to my common sense statement.