80% of Drivers Say ELDs Make Finding Parking Harder

Drivers are feeling the effects of reduced flexibility from the electronic logging device mandate and are spending more time searching for and worrying about parking, according to a report from Trucker Path.

Trucker Path found that 80% of the 5,400 surveyed drivers reported that the ELD mandate made it more difficult to find truck parking. Based on usage of the Trucker Path app, the company found that compared to last year, drivers were looking up parking information more frequently in the evening hours.

Drivers listed truck parking as the number one cause of stress while on the job, followed by ELDs and hours of service. In the survey, 70% of truckers admitted to violating HOS rules because they couldn’t find parking, and 96% of truckers have parked in unauthorized areas when they couldn’t find legal parking.

The survey also found that while changes to personal conveyance rules may help to ease the stress caused by a search for parking, capacity was also a factor in truckers’ struggles. There are an estimated 330,000 truck parking spots total in the U.S., most of which are located at truck stops, but also at weigh stations, truck scales, and commercial shopping centers.

Most of those parking spaces are located in the eastern part of the country, and the highest concentrations are found near urban areas. Even though most truckers believe the truck parking problem to be as bad or worse than it has been in previous years, the number of available parking spots did increase, according to data from the Trucker Path app.

The Trucker Path Truck Parking report also includes suggestions for possible solutions to the truck parking problem, including better utilization of available capacity, expanding capacity at existing non-traditional locales, offering more HOS flexibility, and continuing to build more spots.

The full report is available here.