What is the Truck Parking Club?

In this episode,  Lindsey talks with Evan from the Truck Parking Club.

The innovative platform, launched in 2022, was introduced as a solution for the truck parking shortage, functioning like "Airbnb for truck parking." The service connects truckers with over 500 locations and 14,000 available spaces across the U.S., enabling users to reserve parking easily through a website or mobile app, with options for various booking durations. The user experience is streamlined for both drivers and fleet managers, emphasizing efficiency and developed according to driver feedback, particularly with a focus on safety amenities, which have garnered positive reviews from women drivers. Evan highlighted planned participation in several upcoming industry events and encouraged attendees to subscribe to the club's newsletter for updates. For further engagement, he provided contact information, noting the active presence of Truck Parking Club on social media and a 24/7 accessible customer service line.

https://truckparkingclub.com/

The Next Generation in Trucking Association is a non-profit trade association who is engaging and training the next generation of trucking industry professionals by partnering with high schools, community/technical colleges and private schools to connect to and launch training programs around North America.

Visit our website:  www.nextgentruckers.org

Contact us at:  info@nextgentruckers.org

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Transcript

Hi. Welcome to NGT Talks. I am really excited today to have an awesome, amazing partner of ours, Evan, with the truck parking club. Evan, thank you for being on NGT talks. 

Speaker 2
00:26
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. 

Speaker 1
00:27
Okay. You and I, we met. We've met at the Mid America truck show. We met at a Alabama trucking association conference. And I think several. We've seen each other at several other events. And where are you right now? I want to hear what are. What are you up to? 

Speaker 2
00:45
So I'm actually at the Walcott Truckers Jamboree at Iowa 80. 

Speaker 1
00:51
How is it? 

Speaker 2
00:52
It's awesome. It's awesome. It was a little rainy this morning, but it is cleared up and it's a good first day. And I'm sure the next couple of days will be even better. 

Speaker 1
01:03
So tell me, you guys have a booth. What are you doing? Who are you talking to? Who's out there? 

Speaker 2
01:09
Yeah, so we have a booth. I think there's maybe a few hundred different companies that have booths scattered all across the parking lot. The truck parking lot here at Iowa 80, there's a bunch of truckers coming by all the booths. We've met several of our customers, which we call trucker members today. So it was awesome to get to meet more and more members and talk with them. So just meeting with prospective members and also current members. 

Speaker 1
01:40
Okay. Well, that is a great transition into what in the world is the truck parking club. And, I mean, you created this, right? I want to hear about how you got into the industry and what you're creating. And you've had so much success and we are here to celebrate that with you. 

Speaker 2
02:02
Yeah. So I appreciate that. I'm Evan Shelley, co founder and CEO, and started truck parking club back in 2022. It's like the airbnb for truck parking two sided marketplace where we help truckers find a reserve parking through our website mobile app. And we help property owners and businesses monetize their extra space. So that could be a trucking company, tow truck company, truck repair shop, Warehouse. Any location that has extra space that's suitable for truck parking, we can get them in the business of truck parking same day. And ultimately we create more parking that gives drivers more options all across the US. We're at 500 locations and around 14,000 spaces across the US. 

Speaker 1
02:45
Yeah. And I just saw that you just celebrated your 500th spot, which is huge. We have for the last few years, been reading about truck parking and how horrible it is. So I'm assuming you came up with this idea to solve a problem. How did you decide that this is something we needed in our industry? 

Speaker 2
03:09
Yeah. So coming from outside the industry, I was a real estate guy, and through doing real estate, I actually figured out that there was an issue with truck parking and ended up, back in 2021, started to talk with a bunch of stakeholders in the industry, in transportation, logistics, trucking companies, and also started talking to people that were in and around truck parking and really saw that ultimately, people were starting to pay more attention to the issue and that it was looking like companies in the private sector were going to help to solve the problem. And one of the way that ultimately, I thought we could be impactful was to create a marketplace and aggregate, you know, thousands of locations across the US and ultimately give drivers a lot of awareness and ability to reserve parking and make it easier for them. 

Speaker 1
04:08
I mean, it's brilliant. It's a brilliant idea. And I'm a driver. Tell me, how do I get connected to what you're doing and how is this going to help me in my business? 

Speaker 2
04:21
Yeah. So if you're a driver out there and you are the having issues finding parking, or you want to park at a place that perhaps has a lot less traffic coming and going, a lot less congested areas, or if you need to do something like drop a trailer for several days, or leave your truck and trailer for several days, or book a long term parking spot, truck parking club is a good fit for that. At the end of the day, we're a marketplace, and we have combinations of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly booking options at our locations. And drivers can use this however they see fit. And I think probably most importantly, we give a lot of options. So with 500 locations, you can go on truck parking club and probably find something for you. 

Speaker 2
05:08
And we make it extremely easy to go onto our app or website and book parking in real time. And on top of that, we have 24 7365 customer service made up of former drivers. So if you ever get hung up on anything, you can feel free to call into our customer service, and we'll work with you to solve any issues that you have. 

Speaker 1
05:31
Yeah. What kind of calls do you all get and what kind of calls do your drivers get? 

Speaker 2
05:36
So we get all kinds of different calls. There's always something. We have tens of thousands of drivers that use us, and there's always something interesting going on. I mean, the overwhelming majority, though, is just educational calls, awareness, drivers calling in because they're curious. Maybe they meet us at the Iowa 80 truck show and, you know, a month later are looking at truck parking club and decide to call in and ask a few questions, that's a very large amount of it. And then on occasions, you know, things happen, you know, drivers can't find the location, whatever the case may be, and our customer service team will help them out. 

Speaker 1
06:17
You know, I really appreciate this because what you're doing is making the driver job a more attractive job to the next generation. First of all, thank you for your support. You have partnered with us and we really appreciate you all believing in our mission, which is to train the next generation and create the workforce and really help these young people find good jobs and get trained for the good jobs that we have. But other than that, I mean, you all are solving a problem that's making the driving job better. So I want to hear how you decided that, you know, what you're doing is making people's lives better. Like, why did you decide this? 

Speaker 2
07:07
Yeah. So ultimately, you know, truck parking, finding truck parking, getting safely parked is one of the biggest issues for drivers consistently. Right. And, you know, we're very mission oriented, and our mission is to. A truck parking club helps truckers save time and fuel by efficiently finding reserving truck parking across the US. The average driver takes 60 minutes on a daily basis, up to 60 minutes on a daily basis to find parking. Our mission is to get that to ten minutes or less, ultimately getting drivers further down the road, saving time and fuel and making their lives easier. And, you know, truck parking club can really be used as a retention tool for carriers that want to help their drivers get parked safely, ultimately get them further down the road. 

Speaker 2
07:55
And at the end of the day, for carriers, it's just going to become a very simple, I think, business decision for, you know, providing their drivers with everything they need to remove the stress, the daily stress of the job as much as they can. And one of the ways of doing that is helping them easily find parking. 

Speaker 1
08:18
Yeah. So that's my other question. Right. I'm a carrier and I want to give my fleet access to this. How do I go about this? What's the best process? Do it for a company as a whole or individually, what's the best process? 

Speaker 2
08:34
Yeah. So we've made truck parking club extremely easy to sign up and for, you know, let's say it's for larger carriers. Larger carriers, typically their fleet managers will book for their drivers. And those fleet managers can go right on their desktop and book for their drivers under them. But also the driver themselves can go around the app on their phone and book parking in advance for a location. You know, maybe an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours up the road, which is what we commonly see. So it's a combination of the, you know, the fleet managers and dispatchers booking parking and also drivers booking parking. And there's not really any friction in signing up. You go on and provide your email and create your account. 

Speaker 2
09:26
And know when you book you add what type of vehicle it is, whether it's a trailer, Bob Taylor, or a box truck or truck and trailer. And you input that information and you book and get parked. Typically for first time people, first time booking it takes just a few minutes, and then on their next time booking, it takes a matter of seconds to book parking. 

Speaker 1
09:51
Yeah. It's a really user friendly interface. Right. I mean, what prompted you to create this easily accessible app that they can have on their phone and be able to quickly find parking and be able to book it for down the road? 

Speaker 2
10:14
Yeah. So ultimately, I think, you know, I created our MVP minimum viable product back in 2022 myself. I'm not a tech guy, but I really built. I built it just very simply. I made it super simple. It wasn't perfect, but people started using it. And then from there, we really just built the platform around what the driver recommended they wanted and tried to make it as simple as possible. And tens of thousands of iterations of the app later, here we are. We get a ton of compliments on how easy the app is to use, but we built it around customer feedback, the driver just giving us feedback on what they think we should do. And that's worked very well for us. 

Speaker 2
10:58
And at the end of the day, you hear tech companies say, well, you want to keep people on your app. And we've actually taken the opposite approach. It is how quickly can we get a driver on our app, get them to find parking that they need, and then get off the app, back to their. Back to their job and be more productive. And that's how we've designed the app. It's actually just to get them book as quickly as possible, and that works really well for us. 

Speaker 1
11:24
Let them get it, book it, and then go back to what they want to be doing. If they're on their break, maybe they're scrolling Instagram or watching some shows, but making their life better and making it easier and getting them on the app and then off the app. I love that. That's. That's a different mindset. Right, than a lot of the other tech companies. What they've got out there. 

Speaker 2
11:49
Yeah, I think ultimately, you know, the first person I hired, a truck parking club, was a former driver. Her name's Tracy. She had her CDL 30 years. Was one of our first customers, actually, too. And, you know, I've talked with her a lot about how we designed it. And then from there, we've hired. Half of our company is made up of former drivers, a lot of which work in customer service for us. And they've helped kind of build the app and make it simple and provide feedback from the customer that the driver feedback on things that we can do to improve the app. And it's all kind of culminated into just creating something super simple, efficient, and fast to use. 

Speaker 1
12:31
And I am sure the ladies that are listening to this want to know, what are you doing to make it safe for me as a female to park and to feel good about where I'm parking? 

Speaker 2
12:46
Yeah. So what we do is we list amenities for every single location, and we list photos as well. So giving you all the information you need to make an informed decision about the property. You can go in and filter by security, filter by fence, gated, filtered by cameras, things of that nature. And all that gives you more information on the level of security at the property. And we get a ton of positive feedback from women all across the US, especially at shows like the one I'm at right now. Women coming up and just talking about how they leveraged our network to be able to find safe parking. And it's been amazing to hear that feedback. And we're heavily involved with associations like women in trucking. 

Speaker 2
13:34
And I think, you know, creating a product that helps women drivers get parked safely is really awesome to hear feedback from. From our customers. And it's definitely something we think about a lot. I mean, we. I guess probably around half of the former drivers we've hired are women, and so. Women former drivers. So it does mean a lot to us. And I think I could speak for everyone on the team. 

Speaker 1
14:08
That's awesome. And so you're everywhere, Evan. Tell me, for the rest of the year, where are some of the shows that people can find? Truck parking club at? 

Speaker 2
14:19
Yeah, so we're at Iowa 80 right now. It's a great question, actually, remaining shows through the rest of the year. We've hit a lot of the good ones at this point. Like Matt's, like Iowa 80 here. I know we'll be. It's not a truck show, but the whole team will be out in Vegas for the inside Trimble conference. A ton of carriers go to that one. So if anyone's going to be out in Vegas, for that. I think that's in September, and I think there's like 500 carriers that show up to that one or something. That's what I heard. So if any drivers and carriers are there for that, you know, I can't really, I'd have to look at my calendar. 

Speaker 2
15:09
But I know one of the other big ones that we'll be doing is the TCA has a call in Washington in December. That's like a event. And then. Goodness, the, isn't it the grease across America that they. 

Speaker 1
15:33
Yeah, yeah. 

Speaker 2
15:35
So we did that last year, and we'll do that this year as well. So those are a couple of the ones I can think of right off. We actually have a newsletter that goes out that always lists the events a few weeks in advance. So if you go to Truckparkingclub.com and sign up for our newsletter, you'll see all of our stuff in advance. But those are a couple of the ones I can think of. 

Speaker 1
15:55
Yeah. And we will be at the Trimble Insight conference, really excited about what they're doing this year. So Trimble is bringing us out there and they're providing the opportunity for everybody at the conference, support next gen trucking as a nonprofit and really promoting what we're doing to help better the industry. So look forward to seeing you at that conference and what you're doing is needed. We're thankful and we want to get people connected to you. How can people find you on social media? How can they find your website? What do they do to get a hold of you? 

Speaker 2
16:38
Sure. So I'm most active on LinkedIn. If you want to reach out to me, you can get me on there. 

Speaker 1
16:45
And you have a great newsletter on LinkedIn, by the way. 

Speaker 2
16:48
Thanks. Yeah, yeah. So that's the one that I was mentioning. So we actually do post it on LinkedIn as well. And as far as truck parking club is concerned, we're on all the socials, so you can reach out to us on any of those. If you want, you can go to truckparkingclub.com. We have a contact us form. All of our socials are listed in the footer of the website. You can also call into our 24 7365 customer service. That number is 888899 park. That's 888-899-7275 as well. 

Speaker 1
17:22
Well, thank you for what you're doing, and we look forward to how you guys are going to grow and get more truck parking across the country and make the job a better job for all of these hardworking drivers. That are out there. So thanks for all you do, Evan. 

Speaker 2
17:38
Thank you very much for having me.