Need a place to park that rig? Strategic partnership between TruckerTools and TruckPark can help

Trucker Tools and TruckPark have formed a strategic partnership to help truckers find safe parking facilities to help ease the national shortage for overnight rest areas for truck drivers.

Trucker Tools, which provides a suite of cloud-based truckload freight management and carrier engagement tools for freight brokers and small-fleet operators, has become the first digital carrier management platform to launch “in app” access for TruckPark’s extensive network of overnight commercial truck parking resources.

The lack of adequate parking for 18-wheelers is not just a safety issue – it’s an economic one as well. The inability to find parking hurts drivers and carriers financially. According to American Transportation Research Institute research, truck drivers spend an average of one hour searching for parking every day. The lost time equates to $4,600 in lost wages per year, based on the hour lost to nonproductive trips.

Trucker Tools and TruckPark aim to tackle that problem which also contributes to the truck driver shortage, experts say.

The companies have launched a platform integration that will enable overnight truck parking reservations powered by TruckPark to be made directly inside the Trucker Tools mobile driver app.

Trucker Tools’ community of drivers can access the real-time parking reservation system seamlessly, without having to open another app, and with a few clicks, find, reserve, pay for and receive a digital receipt for secured parking at 100 privately-owned, commercial parking facilities in the U.S.  More may be coming.

“We are definitely looking at expansion,” Anthony Petitte, CEO of Chicago-based TruckPark, told LM. He said his company is looking at adding truck stop locations as well in the future.

Petitte said the move is a common sense, no-cost option to help time-harried truckers easily find safe, available parking without wasting precious time. TruckPark is a two-year-old venture.

Here are the figures – there are 3.5 million truck drivers. Of those, 1.6 million are over the road drivers. They look for parking approximately 215 days a year. There are only about 400,000 available, safe parking spaces nationally.

“You have market that is really lopsided,” Petitte told LM.

“Its supply and demand,” he added. “There always been more drivers than parking. But it’s gotten worse.”  Cargo security is a huge issue as valuable loads of things like pharmaceuticals, computer chips and cigarettes are popular items to steal at rest stops and other locals.

Truck Park has three requirements – there must be 24 hours camera surveillance, a manned guard at the entrance and a key pad to obtain entry. Lots have to meet one of those three requirements to be added to its data base, Petitte said. Most traditional truck rest stops do not meet all those security requirements, he added.

“Even with COVID-19, drivers need parking,” he said. “They’re driving more hours. They’re even more fatigued.”

The agreement represents an expansion and enhancement of parking management capabilities on the Trucker Tools app, according to Prasad Gollapalli, founder and chief executive of Reston, Va.-based Trucker Tools.

“For many years the parking feature of our app has aggregated and presented up-to-date information on thousands of public parking resources, such as highway rest areas, commercial truck stops and Walmart locations, among others,” he explained. “It also provides drivers with in-route, on-the-way directions and arrival ETAs,” which help truckers manage hours of service compliance.

 Finding safe and secure overnight parking is one of the most difficult tasks truckers face every day, Gollapalli said.

“Addressing this issue and helping drivers manage the parking challenge is a top imperative for us,” he noted. “By integrating TruckPark’s functionality and network, we’re making our parking feature that much more comprehensive and timelier, giving drivers accurate, new visibility into available parking options for commercial lots,” he added. 

Petitte of TruckPark said fleet managers, brokers and digital freight markets can leverage its technology to reduce costs, improve operational efficiency and boost safety. “Petitte added that TruckPark continues to expand parking resources and is adding new commercial lots to its network weekly.

“We’re excited to make this new integration available today through Trucker Tools’ ecosystem,” he said.

The Trucker Tools mobile app has been downloaded by nearly 900,000 independent truckers and is utilized by some 130,000 small fleet operators. Trucker Tools says TruckPark is the first platform in the industry to aggregate and consolidate commercial truck parking sites into single online resource for independent truckers.

Integration work is underway with full commercial availability expected by the end of April, the companies said.