One Parking Space for Every 11 Drivers. The Money Is Flowing. The Spots Aren't.

One truck parking space for every 11 drivers in this country. That's not a projection — that's the ratio ATRI measured in 2025. Read that number again before you read another federal press release about how the parking crisis is being addressed.

Since April 2025, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says his department has delivered more than $360 million for truck parking, including $62 million in BUILD grants. Congress added $200 million for FY2026 and earmarked another $200 million for FY2027. The press releases wrote themselves. The parking spots did not.

Driver-sourced rankings — crowdsourced from people actually circling lots at midnight, not from a state DOT's construction timeline — grade the Northeast and East Coast as near-unusable. That's the same corridor where most of the freight moves. The money flowed. The problem stayed.

The people writing the checks don't feel it

ATRI's 2025 Critical Issues Survey asked both drivers and motor carrier executives to rank their top concerns. Drivers put truck parking at No. 1. Motor carrier executives ranked it No. 9 — behind the economy, lawsuit abuse reform, and the driver shortage.

Andy Owens, CEO of A&M Transport, said the quiet part out loud. He noted that he'd be upset if someone took his reserved parking space at his Oregon office, then pointed out that if executives actually had to fight for a spot themselves, the issue "wouldn't come up next year."

That's the whole problem in two sentences. The people who could push this to the top of every legislative priority list go home to a reserved spot. The drivers circling for an hour don't get a seat at the table.

ATRI estimates that parking searches burn roughly 56 minutes out of a driver's day — adding up to nearly $6,800 a year in lost earnings per driver. That's not an inconvenience fee. That's a pay cut the driver absorbs while the carrier's operating ratio stays clean.

Alex Rosen, ATA's senior VP of legislative affairs, put it plainly: "I feel like we are asked to discuss truck parking every single year, and that is because there is a shortage of initiative to actually do something meaningful to address this issue." When the industry's own lobbyist says the money is moving but the initiative isn't, the press releases aren't the story anymore.

Wrong places, wrong math

The Northeast averages 15 truck spaces per rest area. The South averages 25. The freight density runs the opposite direction. Nobody at the DOT seems bothered by that math.

Until the people approving the parking budgets have to sleep on an exit ramp, the rankings will look exactly the same next year.