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Truck volumes in our nation are predicted to rise in upcoming years, but truck drivers are already struggling to find safe and adequate parking – there just isn’t enough of it.

Truck drivers have to resort to parking their long-haul trucks in retail store parking lots or along access roads because they can’t find any place else to stop and rest. Many designated highway rest stops across the country have been closed down, eliminating even more of the already few options truck drivers have.

Assistant professor at OSU and PacTrans PI, Sal Hernandez, shared his research addressing this problem on Engineering Out Loud, a podcast hosted by Steve Frandzel from the College of Engineering at OSU.

Lack of long-haul truck parking not only affects the truckers, but also anyone that regularly drives or rides a car. When a truck driver isn’t rested enough, the likelihood of being in an accident with another vehicle rises.

Hernandez has been working with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) to look into the extent and impact of Oregon’s truck parking shortage.

“We really couldn’t look at the whole state, but we focused on U.S. 97 first to see what the issues were on that route,” Hernandez said on the podcast.

U.S. 97 is a highway that runs along the east side of the Cascades from California to Washington, and truck traffic is particularly heavy there. Hernandez observed about 200 truckers in the PNW and collected seven years worth of data for truck crashes along U.S. 97, applying crash harm to his findings.

“Crash harm is a metric that we use. It allows us to quantify the impact of safety issues,” Hernandez said on the podcast. “There are numerous studies out there that actually allow us to quantify injury severity, types of crash, the monetary loss, damage to goods and so forth. So, we use these values, put them together, and that becomes the potential crash harm metric.”

Along with confirming his theory that there weren’t enough truck parking locations, Hernandez’s survey also gave more detailed results. For example, the worst season for truckers is winter, the worst day is Friday, the worst time is between midnight and 6:00 a.m., and one of the biggest concerns for over half of truck drivers was the inability to find appropriate parking.

Hernandez also found a correlation between at-fault truck crashes and a high demand for truck parking. Many at-fault truck crashes occur because drivers are fatigued and cannot find a designated location to park. This often leads to speeding along highways in a race against the service clock.

“Federal law mandates that truckers can drive no more than 11 hours within a 14 hour window, so long as they’ve rested at least 10 hours beforehand,” Frandzel said during the podcast. “Those hours are tracked and reported automatically by electronic logging devices.”

When truckers give up trying to find parking, they settle for roadway exits and ramps. This poses as a safety hazard to the general public.

Based on Hernandez’s findings, crash harm can potentially total up to $75 million. This number caught a lot of people’s attention and it’s scarier to think about how many injuries and deaths that number represents.

“In 708 at-fault crashes identified in the study, 30 involved fatalities and 264 resulted in injuries,” Frandzel said during the podcast.

The demand for goods is looking like it’s only going to keep growing. Those demands are most likely going to be met using delivery trucks, and there’s going to be a lot of them if we want to receive our food, fuel, and Amazon Prime orders in a timely fashion. 

“In the short term, I think when you look at the issue of truck parking, … there’s a lot of apps out there that provide information to truck drivers on the number of spaces available on both public and private truck parking locations,” Hernandez said on the podcast. “As that technology … becomes more prevalent in the market, we may be seeing better planning by our carrier and the truckers.”

DOT is currently building both private and public partnerships with industries to implement more truck parking locations. Other technologies that have been introduced as a solution are viable message signs along highway routes that notify truck drivers to the nearest parking location, as well as the number of available spaces.

Another solution might be the integration of autonomous freight vehicles into the market. This would likely still require a truck driver to navigate more urban areas, but at least drivers will get the rest they need on long-haul journeys. However, this is still a ways away, we’re not going to be seeing flying cars à la the Jetsons anytime soon.

“Our economy really depends on [our truck drivers] … If we don’t provide a safe and adequate location for them to park, it makes it really difficult for them, it make it really dangerous for everybody,” Hernandez said on the podcast.

You can listen to the full podcast by clicking here!