Ask any truck driver and he will tell you stories about parking and the headaches caused by trying to find it.
"It's simple," said Victor Espinoza, an owner-operator with Van Buren-based USA Truck. "There are three million trucks on the roads and I guarantee you there's not that many spots."
According to the American Trucking Associations, there were 3.63 million Class 8 trucks on U.S. roads in June. The Trucker's Friend database reported 308,920 total commercial vehicle parking spots at public and private sites in the United States in 2015.
To help with the problem, the National Association of Truck Stop Operators launched its Park My Truck mobile application Monday, the first collaboration across the industry to provide real-time data on available commercial vehicle parking spaces around the country. The few other apps on the market rely on drivers to report the number of available spots. Park My Truck data will come from truck stop operators.
"The Department of Transportation, under the direction of Congress, worked to study the issue of truck parking and rather than propose a regulatory solution, sought the advice and counsel of industry leaders," said Lisa Mullings, president of the operators association and its foundation, which is funding the app.
"By creating a common-sense industry solution, we are doing our part to maximize existing public and private truck parking capacity so that the government can spend scarce infrastructure dollars on building and maintaining our roads and bridges."
Truck parking was the third highest concern of drivers in a 2016 American Transportation Research Institute report. About 70 percent of respondents felt that investment in new parking facilities would be the best solution, while 23 percent felt the public sector needed a clearer idea about the harm of closing public parking facilities like rest stops and 6 percent believed real-time truck parking information and systems like the new parking app would work best.
"Frankly, this is related to the gross lack of infrastructure investment," said Shannon Newton, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association.
"In the absence of additional funding allowing for additional capacity of safe, legal parking, alternatives to maximize the utilization of current parking spaces is an aide to drivers out on the road," she said.
Dan Cushman, president and chief executive officer of PAM Transport in Tontitown, is looking to a change in attitudes to alleviate the problem. He has asked companies to be "more driver-friendly and truck-friendly, viewing us as not just as somebody that hauls their product but as a partner."
Many facilities explicitly forbid drivers from sleeping or parking on their property, though drivers must sometimes sit for hours until freight from those facilities is ready to load.
Cushman has heard from drivers who have not been allowed to use the restroom at certain locations even though the driver might be waiting on that customer's product. But, he said, "that is certainly changing much for the better." Some companies now show off their driver lounges to him, he said.
In 2009, Jason Rivenburg was murdered while parked at a deserted gas station in South Carolina, His wife, Hope, lobbied for legislation to make truck parking solutions eligible for federal funding. Passed in 2012, Jason's Law tasked the Department of Transportation with conducting a national survey of the problem and establishing metrics to measure it.
The findings, released in August 2015, revealed Arkansas is among the three states with the lowest total commercial vehicle parking spaces on National Highway System roads.
In recent years the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has converted a former welcome center near West Memphis and former inspection stations to truck parking, said public information officer Danny Straessle.
While the department has no current construction projects for truck parking underway, he said "the industry has communicated to us that there needs to be more ... and when able and the opportunity arises we will look at ways to create more parking."
A major problem, he said, is "the amount of illegal parking on the ramp system."
In an effort not to compete with commercial truck stop operators on many of Arkansas' corridors, "we try to balance what we do and not inhibit commercial opportunities at the same time," he said.
A statewide freight plan is being developed that will evaluate the truck parking problem, as well as other issues. At an August committee meeting at the state Highway Department, results were released from a survey of available parking spaces versus the number of trucks parked, aggregated by exit. In 2015, the survey identified seven exits at more than 200 percent parking capacity in Arkansas.
"Arkansas is one of the world's worst with parking," said Russell Melton, a driver with Beebe-based Stallion Transportation. "They outlawed us parking on ramps and most of the rest stops have been shut down for two years."
Straessle confirmed that many rest areas in Arkansas are under renovation.
A 2007 Arkansas law banned drivers from stopping on ramps and shoulders, a safety measure also in place elsewhere in the nation. So when a commercial driver's clock is running out and he cannot find a parking space at a truck stop or rest area, "the driver is being forced to make a difficult decision," Newton said.
"They aren't parking there because they want to, they're parking there because it's their safest option at the time," she said. "They shouldn't have to have to make that decision though."
According to Espinoza, the burden is placed on the driver.
"You've gotta trip plan," he said. "To them [the government and the companies], it feels like it doesn't matter whether there's parking for us. They see it as our job to plan for it."
Espinoza said he often calls Wal-Mart stores to ask if they will let him park for the night when his clock is running down. Wal-Mart lets its own drivers park at stores, and he said many will allow him to park there too.
Melton says he drives at night and sleeps during the day, in large part because it makes parking so much easier.
"Truck drivers are between a rock and hard place. They have to take mandatory breaks and sometimes there's no place to park in a safe environment," said Bill Davis, president of Bill Davis Trucking in Batesville.
SundayMonday Business on 10/09/2016