In the last month I have seen 2 tas where there are many amazon prime trailers taking up valuable real estate. One was the ta in Troy,IL and the 2nd was ta Richmond,va wth. With all the money amazon has it can rent out a warehouse or some other lot to put their trailers. Truck drivers have minimal parking as it is so I wish they would stop taking it away. I wouldn’t be surprised if amazon is paying ta to store trailers but it could pay for an industrial lot somewhere else.
That’s probably temporary. I can see Amazon eventually buying empty dirt lots (like FedEx and UPS) for the sole purpose of dropping trailers.
It is most likely contractor/carriers that are hauling for Amazon using the T/A's as a drop lot, for their drivers who are on break or reset. Amazon has D/C's virtually every 50 miles from each other. So from a risk and liability standpoint it would not make sense for them to expose their equipment like that. Every trailer has tracking and GPS on it so once corporate gets wind of whats going on, it will most likely stop.
I spoke to a mechanic in Troy about it. Those trailers are there to be worked on. There is some new regulation that holes can't be patched. The entire panel has to be replaced. The mechanic said they were the only shop in the area that could do it and they were working on the trailers as time permitted. Troy is kind of a dead TA anyway so it's not like they are keeping anyone from parking most nights.
So Amazon is paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for repairs to trailers. Typical truck drivers spend $10-$20, if they are lucky. If it was your business, which would you prefer?
