IdleAire has selected Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) as the program manager for the national deployment of IdleAire’s Advanced Travel Center Electrification (ATE) ShorePower system.

Under the agreement, PB will manage the deployment of the IdleAire system in more than 200,000 truck parking spaces in travel center locations across the U.S.
The agreement between IdleAire and PB also includes a substantial investment by PB in IdleAire. PB is a planning, engineering, construction and program management consulting firm with headquarters in New York City.
As part of the agreement, PB has stationed Roger Ludlam, a division-level president of PB, in IdleAire’s corporate headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn. Ludlam is charged with building a central program management team in Knoxville to oversee the program and coordinate with IdleAire. PB also has more than 150 offices dispersed across the U.S. to help implement the deployment in the different regions of the country.
Although IdleAire will open its 22nd location this month, the company doesn’t want to remain in the construction business, says IdleAire COO David Everhart.
"Today, IdleAire manages the construction process in-house. We have designed and thoroughly tested the construction process. Now it’s time to begin deployment on a much larger scale. After considering all the options, we have chosen PB as our partner. They have the expertise, resources and track record to manage a job of this magnitude. With this new partnership the national construction project is being turned over to PB to manage; however, our existing staff will continue in their current roles," said Everhart.
"We know that as a partner, PB will work very hard to continue the great relationships we have built in the travel center industry," he said. "This is the company that was involved in the construction of the strategic computing complex at Los Alamos National Lab, Pier-G Mega Terminal in Long Beach, the expansion of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, and is currently overseeing construction of one of the world’s largest airport expansions in Madrid, Spain. It’s good to have them as a partner as we accelerate our deployment across the country," Everhart said.
"We’ve worked with IdleAire over the past year in anticipation of this national agreement," said Michael Schneider, executive vice president of Parsons Brinckerhoff. "IdleAire is an exciting company that has an incredible record of accomplishment in just over four years. We are pleased to be both a management resource and an investor in IdleAire, forming a genuine partnership. We believe IdleAire has the best solution to a significant national challenge, and we are very excited about the opportunity to help deploy its patented technology in travel centers across the country. We believe this system will pay big dividends to the trucking industry, the public and the nation in many ways."
With 20 locations, driver use of the IdleAire system has exceeded 2.1 million hours. The company hit the 2 million-hour mark in August and is now delivering more than 50,000 hours of service each week, a figure that continues to climb as each new location is opened. Drivers using the IdleAire shorepower system have already conserved more than 2 million gallons of fuel in that same period and repeat drivers using the system exceed 70% each day.