The difficulties of truck parking are familiar to anyone in the trucking industry, and East coast experts are saying there is still no solution in sight, despite truckers’ pleas.
41-year truck driver and president of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association’s Lehigh Chapter, Bob Dolan, says he has had conversations regarding truck parking on the local, state, and federal levels, but no sure-fire solution has been reached; although the idea of taking the issue of truck parking to the private sector has been discussed.
“There is no silver bullet solution to this at the moment,” Dolan said to 69 News.
“Parking a truck is not like parking your vehicle. Trucks average 53-foot-long trailers alone. It does take a lot of space to park.”
According to a survey conducted by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission in 2018, 35% of trucker respondents said they spent more than 30 minutes searching parking. Pile on a plethora of local truck parking ordinances prohibiting truck parking in residential areas, and the legally mandated 10-hour-uninterrupted break, during which truckers are not allowed to move, and the mere idea of parking a truck overnight along the east coast inspires a headache.
“Right here where I’m at now it’s a nightmare. I’m lucky I even got a parking spot,” said Dorando Love, a truck driver who hauls to the Lehigh Valley at least twice a month.
“Service areas on the turnpike is much easier, but that can get congested also.”
“In this area there’s really not that many truck stops,” added truck driver Shawn Harris, who also frequents the Lehigh Valley for work and says he sometimes has to find a remote backroad to pull into for the night.
“Last night I parked in Lamar, Pennsylvania about three hours away.”
While truck parking is a major issue in most parts of the country, the rapidly increasing number of warehouses in the Lehigh Valley area has far outpaced the number of available overnight parking spaces needed for the trucks that frequent them, making for a true truck parking “nightmare.”
The bottom line? “Get more parking,” urge Harris, Love, and surely any truck driver familiar with the area.
Check out clips from the interview here.