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How will ELD affect the Truck Parking Situation?

It is inevitable that ELD (Electronic Logging Device) will go into effect this December. While some drivers are concerned this means no longer being able to cheat the logging device by re-writing paper log books, there is a thornier issue at stake– parking.

Truck Stops start emptying by 6 or 7 a.m. when most drivers shower, grab a cup of coffee and hit the road. In about 12 hours at 6:30 pm or so, those same Truck Stops start filling up again. Once ELDs go into effect, finding parking is going to get even harder. Imagine 3,000,000 truck drivers fighting for 300,000 parking spots. The drivers will have to get on the road even earlier in order to be able to get to the Truck Stop earlier to find a parking spot.
Add to the mix that drivers do not have the same sleep cycles and for those who prefer to drive later at night, finding parking will be an even greater obstacle. Furthermore, it will affect road safety; interrupted sleep cycles can cause sleep-deprived drivers to make life-threatening driving errors already the leading cause of truck related accidents.
products.Now imagine this situation, a driver still has an hour of drive time. The driver checks the GPS for nearest truck parking and finds that the closest parking is 10 miles away and the next one after that is 70 miles away. What does the driver do? Lose 50 minutes of drive time or continue driving for the next 70 miles and violate the E-log? Most likely it will NOT be the latter. Thus, the driver will lose 50 minutes of drive time. For the OTR (Over The Road) drivers, who stay on the road for months and are paid by the mile, this can really impact their salaries. What is worse is that this scenario can happen every day! For instance if this occurs 3 times a week; this is almost 14 hours of drive time a month! That will cause a tremendous decrease in the drivers’ income and thus the drivers will either stop driving or ask for higher pay. Higher pay for the drivers will result in an increase of the shipping costs, which will ultimately affect all us consumers because higher shipping costs mean higher sale cost of the products.

Now, what solution does Trelp  provide?

Trelp allows users to mark new parking locations anywhere on the map simply by dropping pins.
Referring to the example mentioned, it is more than likely that there will be several spots suitable for a trucker to spend the night. But without knowing exactly where to go, the drivers won’t want to take the risk. Now, if the parking spots were already marked on the map – that would be a no-brainer.

Trelp is also a platform to share last mile directions and other intel about different shippers and receivers. Users are able to share information such as hours of operation, nearby parking spots, appointment requirements and anonymous reviews on Trelp.

Since Trelp’s launch, we have added over 400 undiscovered parking spots all across the United States. Our goal is to have 3,000,000 parking spots available on Trelp by the end of 2019.

Contact:
Andrey Chabanov
andrey@trelp.io
(310) 351-2054