If you’ve rented a moving van and driven cross country, or hit the highway in a minivan on a family road trip, then you’ve probably had that feeling - your eyes feel heavy, your head starts to droop, and you know you need to find a safe place soon to park and refresh.

For professional drivers moving 80,000 pounds of truck and cargo down the highway, it’s vital to find places to park and rest long before weariness set in.

Highway Businesses Provide Safe Truck Parking.

Today’s federal hours of service laws require professional truck drivers to rest for 10 hours between shifts. Without the parking spaces highway businesses provide, truck drivers could not find the safe parking spaces they need to meet these requirements.

Many truckstops don’t even charge for these spaces – they provide overnight parking as a free service to the professional drivers who stop in for food or fuel.

Rest Area Commercialization Could Place the Nation’s Truck Parking Supply at Risk.

Proposals to “commercialize” rest areas place highway businesses and the parking spaces they provide at risk. Truckstops at the exits cannot hope to compete if state-supported rest areas are suddenly allowed to sell food and fuel right on the Interstate.  As a result, those highway businesses and their parking spaces could disappear.

Rest areas cannot fill the gap. Rest areas offer only 31,300 truck parking spaces, according to a 2003 report by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. The remainder of the nation’s truck parking supply is provided by highway businesses.

Virginia Plan Would Threaten 7,300 Truck Parking Spaces.

Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board recently voted to urge Congress to lift the long-standing ban on food and fuel sales at interstate rest areas.

The board’s resolution came as Virginia officials drew fire from elected officials, truckers and residents for a plan to close 19 rest areas, which would result in a loss of 225 truck parking spaces.

In contrast, Virginia’s private businesses already offer roughly 7,300 spaces for professional drivers. Any proposal to commercialize rest areas in Virginia would cripple these businesses, which depend on Interstate travelers to survive.