Call me crazy . . . .

Some areas of the country that have high volume of truck traffic suck. Cities for instance.

Other areas don't have a problem.

You've also got the problem that most of the parked. Have nowhere to go. Dallas/Ft.Worth, Denver, Nogales, Phoenix, Salt Lake City areas come to mind. And there's plenty of other cities.

Then you've got cities and towns that don't want idleing trucks. And towns that want truckstops to leave. That TA east of Seattle comes to mind.

The mentality is this. America wants their goods. But HATES trucks.

 

Look at the off ramps and on ramps at North Bend. Can you blame them for not wanting trucks around? Same with the old scale at the 18 junction. Somewhere along the line all the slobs decided it was ok to toss their trash out before they left and we wonder why nobody wants us to park anywhere.

 

You could take eastern half of colorado, much of western Kansas and half of Nebraska south of the missile fields. Pave it all, paint proper parking lines for semis.

You will find that there is insufficent space for all the semis in the area at night when everyone needs to park now due to ELD.

Two decades ago or so, park and view went out of business becuase no one parked long enough to hook in. And cell phones and internet went their own way. (We used it a little bit but dropped it due to the expense and limited time to use it each week in total only a few hours parked)

Today I don't expect the parking problem to have changed.

You will have to adapt and become creative with parking. Preferably where it's legal to do so. You might even put in a 9 hour ELD day and park when you see a half empty truckstop 100 miles from where you need to be. Just get a new appt time if that makes you late. But you will be legally parked.

 

I took an almost 20 year break from OTR. There are many more truckstops now, than in the past. BUT, there are many, many more trucks. Compare the cost of a new truckstop and a new Semi-truck. It just takes a lot longer to build a truckstop than buy a truck. Also it seems big and medium size cities are being served my fewer & older truckstops as the cities get larger.

 

I think @rank and @Long FLD nailed it. The astounding cost to buy the property and the clear/pave it then pay property tax and upkeep on all while you already know that a large percentage of guys will be shoveling their trash out on, pissing all over, crapping on your brand new parking lot until nobody wants to stop there anymore. It really sucks and I feel bad for the guys that gotta deal with that crap but I don't think there is a easy or quick fix.

 

Yeah but if you could find a market for piss jugs and garbage. It might work.

 

If most of us wouldn't look the other way, or justify a bad behavior, then many places would welcome trucks. A perfect location near a major freeway interchange in the burbs was discussed with a number of us who could have invested in it but when we saw the numbers and the revenue after four years, maintaining the place with bad behavior prevented it.

 

I'm not saying it couldn't work. People spend huge amounts of money of worse ideas that are much dirtier every day like houses in New Jersey so anything is possible.

 

Their is no money in truck stop parking lots and everyone want to buy their stuff at Walmart or grocery store and then park at the truck stop. Remember when most truck stops had buffet. Then TA started to close them. Now TA/Petro are closing the restaurants at 10pm or 11pm..

Loves is adding more truck stop and free parking.

 

Follow the money. Most carriers, particularly in the truckload sector don't own enough real estate to park all of the equipment they control. They have been shifting that cost to third parties, truck stops, shippers, municipalities, etc since deregulation started in 1980.
Add the parallel problem of the decline of the independent truck stop, caused by fuel optimization programs, discount programs they couldn't match, and real estate costs putting them under, and you have the perfect storm of a critical shortage in lots of areas.
Add the huge shift in supply chain movements, million square foot whse's taking the place of dead shopping malls only in different locations caused by the explosion of internet commerce and the third leg of the problem is complete. Of course almost none of those huge fulfillment centers allow any truck parking, there or nearby.