Question.. How do you guys set your selves up on the regular to find a decent truck stop at night?? Do you shut down real early or all depends what area your in to shut down??

the reason i ask is i'm sending in this application and its OTR/Regional.. And the only thing that terrifies me is trying to find parking or lord jesus trying to park at a Tight Flying J (The ones at mm 323 in Winchester on 81 and mm. 75 i believe in Wytheville old Petro on 81) or Pilot... What's a young man to do to get over this fear??

 

i am off the road by no later than 1500hrs local time. sometimes i can't be off the road that early. when i can't, i try to keep driving non-stop until it's time to shut down. if i know the truck stops are full, i'll try finding a walmart to park in, or some big dirt lot elsewhere.

it's 1030MST, and i have just shut down for the day. i did an all nighter. i'm one of those guys who can do that crap on a regular basis.

 

Drive through the night and pull up to the T/S just as the early-birds are vacating.

Ironically enough, I've been sentenced to d(g)ay-shift and the sunlight is burning.
Can't wait to get back to grave.

 

Whatever you do, be sure you're not upset when you park. And even if you're not....dont forget about that big azz you're pulling behind you. LOL....i love it, you give me crap, but you are skeeered to park in a truck stop because you cant back.

 

I usually run at night so I get plenty of parking during the day, I usually pull in when everyone is leaving. But I try to stay out of truckstops as much as I can only usually go there for fuel, showers, and faxing. I can eat anywhere and sleep at rest areas, stores, hotels, or shippers if they allow it. But I usually find parking, most guys say there isn't parking but there usually is. It might be way in the back and require a little walking or a difficult spot to get in. If there isn't any at all, you usually gotta go in circles a few times until someone pulls out and someone will. I wouldn't worry so much about it just focus on your job and keep your skills refined and you'll be just fine. I would worry more about a Swifty or CRE taking off your hood while your sleeping.

 

i was waiting for the all might Kev to say something lol.. but see the difference between you and my fear of backing in a tight truck stop is that i'm actually aware of the problem and is working on it.. Don't get it twisted i can back.. I do up to 5 backs a day, but albeit there at wal mart docks and some are hard and some arent..

The reason i love to give you crap because your just delusional and swear everything is suppose to go your way and that your a super swifty..., so yeah i will continue to give you crap on your BS Thread starters..

 

WOW...a whole 5 backs a day. I'm impressed........not really seeing how i've delivered to Wally world before and Sam's, and know that in 99% of the stores, you have a half mile of parking lot in front of you.

But suprised as you might (not) be, I dont get skeeered much anymore when i arrive to a shipper who is in an old building that was designed around 48ft trailers and cabover trucks, and you have MAYBE 10-15 ft of room between noses of parked trucks and the curb. But you see, i've got a little thing called 'courtesy' when I back into spots like that, and i'm one of the first there, i'll drop my trailer, then go park somewhere out of the way to give fellow drivers more room. Not to mention it might save my truck from getting backed into.

So you keep doing your backs at "cherry" locations like Wal-Mart where anybody with 2 oz of brain and a half hour could figure out how to get a trailer parked at the dock.

 

It depends on what part of the country you are at. In the northeast and on the eastern seaboard (I-95) corridor a lot of the truck stops fill up early and there is not a lot of parking, thus it can become difficult and tricky to find a parking spot for the night.

Therefore, what I did was started using Streets & Trips to do all my trip planning and navigation and added the Truck Stops Plus add-on template to it. The Truck Stops Plus template virtually turns Streets & Trips into a trucking program and alleviates the need to buy truck stop directories and other stopping guides since it adds thousands of trucking specific points of interest like truck stops, rest areas, turnpike service plazas, parking areas, weigh stations, super walmarts, etc. to Streets & Trips.

It indicates the parking size of the truck stops, if they charge for parking, if they have a scale, if they do repairs in addition to the name and location information. You can also find and route to truck stops, super walmarts, rest areas, and other points of interest in seconds vs. several minutes, so it takes the work and stress out of it and saves tons of time, and what I like about it is a lot of the time I can find truck stops that I was totally unaware of and much closer than I thought in the area. Plus you can see all the various points of interest right on the map and see their exact locations.

In any event, with all the super walmart locations, rest areas, parking areas, and turnpike service plazas in the Truck Stops Plus template, a lot of times I’ll just find and route to one of those if it is closer to spend the night or if all the truck stops are full, because it will tell you exactly how far each of the various points of interest are from your current location.

Before I switched to the aforementioned above and before Easy Pass I used to hate the northeast and the eastern seaboard, but now I don’t really mind driving over there nearly as much except for when it is close to holidays when the traffic inevitably becomes murder.

Anyway, that’s how I do it. I don’t sweat it anymore, I just let the above aforementioned do all the work for me. I don’t even mind working late anymore and having to worry about finding a parking spot for the night, since with the above it isn’t a problem anymore. Good luck.

 

Oh I forgot to say park in the back of super walmarts out of the way, rest areas, parking areas, turnpike travel plazas, and weigh stations until you get comfortable at backing at truck stops. Then during the day when you stop at truck stops for food, fuel, a shower, etc., practice backing into truck stops parking areas with various degrees of difficulty until you become comfortable. Don’t worry it won’t take long.

 

Yeah i've been practicing lately like trying to set up if i'm backing in a tight spot... I stay at Truck stops alot, but the ones i stay at the most Lee Hi in Lexington, Triple T in Centerville, MD, Oasis in North Carolina, and a Few More.. those arent really Backing Challenged... I guess i'm just terrified of pulling a swifty and back into someone hood...