Moving Words – Parking

Written and submitted by Timothy Brady.

Trucking has a problem, a very big Problem. This problem is causing deaths, injuries and delays for countless drivers and carriers. And the moving industry isn’t immune. The Problem is safe parking for truckers to take their required 10-hour and 34-hour rest breaks. Without the needed rest, driver fatigue is the result. And fatigue is the largest cause of single truck accidents.

Lack of safe, reliable, and available-when-needed truck parking has plagued the industry for years. Typical over-the-road truckers will spend from one to three hours searching for a safe place to park their rigs for a 10-hour required rest break. The closer they are to a large metropolitan area, the fewer parking spaces; for trucks, the longer the search.

While several truckstops now have prepaid reserve parking for which a trucker can pay in advance, this does little to ease the parking problem because they’re still offering the same limited number of available parking spaces. Some estimates indicate there are 10 OTR trucks for each available truck parking space nationwide. Added to this, many states have a limit of two to four hours for a truck to park in a rest area. This means these spaces are unavailable for the 10-hour required rest break under current Hours of Service rules, creating an even greater challenge for truckers to find a place to park and get their required and needed rest.

The vast majority of the nation’s shippers and receivers have a ‘No Truck Parking’ policy. Many truckers have resorted to parking illegally on off- or on-ramps of the interstates, parking in abandoned gas stations or behind shopping malls in secluded areas. Sadly, there are numerous reports of drivers being robbed and murdered because of the lack of safe parking.

Now I’m not suggesting that the moving and storage industry needs to solve this problem for the entire trucking industry. The purpose of this article is to give you something to think about. What might you and your moving company, agency or van line do, to help improve the safety of the van operators and the precious household goods they haul, when it comes to finding a safe place to park for a rest break?

Could you set up a secure, safe area where van operators from other agents within your van line could park overnight when coming through your neck of the woods? You could set up a reservation system with your dispatch, so you’re not overbooked for the spaces you can provide.

What about setting up a specific parking facility with restrooms, showers, a drivers’ room and some vending machines and charge an overnight parking fee?

Could van lines set up phone apps that locate safe places for their van operators to park? Or another idea is to work with other HHG movers and come up with a network so van operators from each agency would have a list of parking facilities across the nation where they could park while in transit.

Fatigue is the number one killer of truckers today. By dealing with the parking shortage head-on within the moving industry, we can create a safer, more secure environment for our van operators, which is an ROI far beyond the dollars invested.

Research Links:

Too Many Trucks, Too Little Parking (WSJ)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/truck-drivers-face-shortage-of-legal-safe-places-to-park-1421799404

Gov. Studies Parking Shortage (GoByTruck)

Gov. Studies Parking Shortage

NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD  HIGHWAY SPECIAL INVESTIGATION – Truck Parking Areas (NTSB)