Walmart....."NO......"

hone eagle wrote:
This is a RV forum therefore we think this is aimed at us,I dont think so, the trucking industry has a huge parking problem they have been passing off to wal-mart and others for years.
Its now come to a head with the E log mandate,commercial drivers must stop when their hours run out ,no ifs ands or buts ,no 'few minutes over' while they look for a spot.
The majors are starting to rent out overnight parking (at truck stops) to assure their drivers dont get caught, this puts small companies and owner operators in a even bigger pickle, thus more and more in retail lots ,and thus more and more signs ,I dont think they are aimed at the RVer.

A good friend runs his family’s specialty trucking company, all they do is food and pharmaceuticals. Strictly big money commodities.

His slant on this is what he ironically calls the ‘Wally Way’ of doing business. Squeeze every penny out of the cost of operation in order to offer the lowest price to the customer. The problem is that it’s a downward spiral, each company under-cutting the next, lower and lower.

In days gone by the trucking companies had their routes planned out, knew where their drivers had to stop for the day and had their spots all planned out. It was pretty normal, just the way things were done, that a truck would stop sometimes hours before the driver would be out of hours because there was nowhere beyond that to stop.

More aggressive pricing meant no ‘deadhead’ miles getting an empty truck back to the yard or the customers location. The truck gets parked where it gets emptied until a back-haul or load to another location can be found.

The result is that trucks are now parked everywhere and anywhere that is within minutes of the driver being out of hours. A favourite lately is the on or off ramps. It’s not technically the highway, nor is it the cross street either. It’s a parking ‘no mans land’.