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Truckers say it is still extremely difficult to find parking places

LITTLE ROCK — Parking, or the lack thereof, for big rigs hasn’t improved much over the past six months, according to polls conducted by www.thetrucker.com.

The unscientific polls, the first conducted last November and the most recent conducted the last week of May, showed that more than 50 percent of truckers who responded said it was extremely more difficult to find a parking place now than it was one year ago.

The percentage of truckers reporting it was extremely more difficult actually dropped from 63 percent in November to 51 percent in November, but comments from truckers indicated that parking is still a problem.

Here are some of those comments from the most recent poll:

“Some of the areas I am in there are no truck stops. I am in Beaufort, S.C., and the only place to park is in a large department store area and I have to pick up a load tomorrow in this town.”

“More and more places like California and such have really restricted where we can park.”

“You sometimes have to look at places not frequented by the normal trucking crowd, such as getting off the interstate and parking on the side of a two-lane road where it is not illegal.”

“You need to plan and be parked by 4 p.m. for a really good spot and by 6 to 7 p.m. for any spot on the West Coast, especially California and Washington.”

“Some nights it’s very hard. Sometimes it’s no problem on my weekly runs from Minnesota to New York City.”

At least two respondents noticed a difference in traffic:

“There doesn’t seem to be as much truck traffic as there was a year ago.”

“It seems in the last few weeks there has been more parking available. Maybe it’s just me. But it also seems there have been fewer trucks on the road.”

In the most recent poll, 5 percent said finding a parking place was not as difficult as one year ago. That percentage in the November poll was just over 1 percent.

Polls are conducted weekly on www.thetrucker.com.

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