Pay for Reserved Parking. Good Idea or Bad?

Ok reserve the space and buy something. Then return it at another TA with receipt at another TA.

 

Chicago 55 charges for parking and buying crap in the store does not count toward the $10 bucks you owe for parking

 

The bar across the street should validate the parking

 

I don't mind paying for parking, lots are expensive to build and maintain. Not to mention paying someone to pick up 50+ piss jugs every morning! I rarely stayed at truck stops unless I was stopping for a reset, normally I would stop for a hot lunch and shower midday, then park for the night at a customer or rest area. I made notes for every shipper/reciever I went to that had unsecured parking areas close to the interstate, and marked them on my map for future parking. Ill be going back OTR over the next year so my opinion might change, I'm planning to buy another freight shaker and run doubles terminal to terminal though. I'm just waiting until they announce the speed limiter rule before I start looking. If it drops to 65mph like the ATA requested then Ill probably go company driver instead. Don't feel like dropping 120k to have the government tell me I can't go the speed I geared my truck for.

 

Noticed the J in Ripon now has an entire row of them as well, at least 25 spots. Got there yesterday at 2:30 pm and got the last free spot available because fortunately someone took off right as I was approaching the row he was in. Sucks...

 

Agreed if you spend money there, you shld get free parking. If you don't buy gas or food, they have no obligation to let you park at all or can charge you for it.

Why shld a truck stop be willing to let those not using their services take up space for potential paying customers? Now I wld object to paying for parking if I bought gas, etc at their place.

 

The big chains have too many customers. Notice how the service sucks while you wait in line to buy your overpriced junk food while half a dozen "supervisors" are behind the counter but only one person is working the cash register? They have realized that about 99% of the population would rather wait in line to pay, then complain about poor service (quietly to themselves usually) rather than put the junk down and take their business elsewhere. Most of them forget about the poor service by the time they exit the parking lot and will be back again soon to do it again.

There is still plenty of "free" parking. Reserved parking is convenient when it is the only / best location for your pickup or delivery in order to absolutely maximize on HOS. It seems to be the drivers who only know that parking exists at the big chains who bellyache the most.

 

There is plenty of complaining.
But as long as they are not loosing customers nothing will be done.

 

If they're gonna all start charging for parking, then at least use some of the $ to tow away all the dropped trailers hogging spots for weeks at a time. Parked at the Pilot in Hesperia about a month ago and bet I saw 25 dropped trailers taking up spots. I was parked between 2 of them and both were still there 14 hours later when I took off...

 

I'm not above paying for a reseved spot,.
Pulling a reefer, we all know how long we get held up at the customer. And when we are done, we can't stay there. I refuse to park outside the gate, cause i may not wake up in the morning, because some thug decided to shoot me and then light my truck on fire ( like what happened in Detroit last year)
Reserve parking is just one less thing to worry about >
But most here don't understand that. Thats fine, stress away.
BTW it's tax deductible. or some companies reimburse their drivers.