Preparations for shutting down begin before you start the day.

Stepped-up enforcement of roadside no-parking zones, fewer public rest area spaces, imposed time limits in rest areas and on shoulders: these are but a few of the parking hassles drivers face routinely.

Ron Donnelly, owner-operator of Refrigerated American Delivery Services in Sacramento, Calif., says the rise in congestion can be held responsible. He’s been driving for more than 30 years and has seen it firsthand. “Twenty years ago there were many more parking places,” he says. “You could park just about anywhere you wanted to, on the roadside.”

More parking is needed in high-traffic lanes, for certain. The best study of the parking needs of truck drivers was a federal effort, the result of a driver survey and other info collected in the early part of this decade. It’s more than five years old, now, but it estimated an apparent shortage of spaces in both truckstops and rest areas in six states, and shortages in rest areas in the vast majority of states, particularly in high-traffic lanes. Over the same time period, a concurrent American Trucking Associations report noted, the feds made money available to states for the express purpose of expanding truck parking options. But ATA has said more recently that only one state had accepted any federal cash for this purpose.

Not-in-my-backyard sentiments have kept truck parking off state budget priorities lists nationwide. Truckstops may have taken up the slack – or not. It depends where you are. One thing is clear: the responsibility for finding parking before you’re out of hours is on you, and conscientious drivers know the score. Regardless of whether you’re on a regional dedicated haul or coast-to-coast irregular route, where you park should be one of your chief concerns. It could mean the difference between a good night’s sleep and an early wake-up call from Smokey.

Know where you’ll be
Largely, whether you can find a good parking space or not is a function of the time of day you shut down. “Nowadays if you’re not at the truckstop by 6 p.m. you might have a tough time getting in,” says San Antonio, Texas-based owner-operator Leonard Martin, who’s leased to Arnold Transportation. “We’ve got all these ‘solar-powered trucks’ today. As soon as the sun goes down they’ve got to park.”