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Semitruck drivers spend hours looking for parking spots, which cuts their earnings and slows down the provision chain. Truckers are relying on a bipartisan push in Congress to assist.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Absolutely anyone on this nation is listening to this subsequent story whereas circling for a parking spot. To allow them to relate to truck drivers throughout the USA. On the finish of an extended day, many wrestle to discover a place to park and sleep. Here is Frank Morris with our member station KCUR.
FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: When you suppose discovering a spot to park your automotive is a ache, strive parking an 80-foot-long semitruck. Federal legislation requires truck drivers to cease and sleep each 14 hours, however there aren’t sufficient locations to park. This Petro truck cease in Oak Grove, Mo., has 300 spots. All of them replenish.
LEROY HERSHBERGER: Parking sucks. Yeah, and truck stops tonight, after 4 o’clock, it is just about full.
MORRIS: Leroy Hershberger (ph) drives all evening each evening as a result of parking is simpler by day. Michael Collins (ph) schedules his work round parking, too. The early night view of the truck cease from his parked cab explains why.
MICHAEL COLLINS: Effectively, you see it. There’s actually no parking. So round 2 o’clock within the morning, they’ll be double-parked all over the place, double- and triple-parked all over the place as a result of there’s simply nowhere to park.
MORRIS: When truck stops like this are jammed and relaxation areas are, too, drivers park on freeway offramps or facet streets, massive retail parking heaps or deserted fuel stations.
TODD SPENCER: There’s one parking house for each 11 vans on the street, one for 11 vans.
MORRIS: Todd Spencer, president of the Proprietor-Operator Impartial Drivers Affiliation, says truck drivers work below fastened guidelines that give them a 14-hour block of time to get their driving completed earlier than they need to park and sleep.
SPENCER: The laws require them to take a steady 10-hour off-duty break. The place the truck stops, it will possibly’t transfer once more for 10 hours.
MORRIS: Truckers construct meticulous journey schedules round these guidelines and recognized parking spots. However holdups at transport docks or dangerous climate can scramble their plans. The issue’s particularly acute on the East Coast, round massive cities and a few mountainous components of the nation. And it isn’t new. Driver Mike Nichols (ph) recollects an evening in 1999, in New Jersey, the primary time he discovered himself with no place to park.
MIKE NICHOLS: And I keep in mind not getting a spot there and having to creatively discover a spot off the street and park principally in a vacant lot.
MORRIS: Drivers have been robbed and even killed parking like that. Discovering areas takes time, typically hours. It slows down freight and eats into drivers’ pay, and it will possibly get below their pores and skin.
NICHOLS: You recognize, relying on the place you are at, it appears like being homeless as a result of you do not know the place you are going to sleep.
MORRIS: And it is getting worse. Annually, there are extra vans on the street. But it surely’s laborious to construct new truck stops. Even the place there’s land out there, neighbors have a tendency to withstand sprawling all-night companies that appeal to diesel vans by the a whole lot. George O’Connor, spokesman for the Proprietor-Operator Impartial Drivers Affiliation, says states can use federal transportation cash to pour concrete slabs for visiting truckers. However they do not need to.
GEORGE O’CONNOR: So truck parking is competing with bridge tasks, for example. I imply, should you’re an elected official, are you going to go lower a ribbon in entrance of a bridge, or are you going to chop a ribbon in entrance of a truck cease?
MORRIS: There is a potential legislative treatment. Democrat and Republican lawmakers in Congress have teamed as much as sponsor payments that may put aside greater than $700 million to construct spots, however passing these payments would require broader bipartisan buy-in to get over-the-road truckers an honest place to park.
For NPR Information, I am Frank Morris.
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