Washington D.C. — Today, the American Economic Liberties Project sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure encouraging them to pass the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act to fund the construction of additional commercial vehicle parking. Unreliable trucker parking is a significant weakness in our national supply chain. It contributes to the current supply-chain bottlenecks and inflation, and creates unsafe working conditions for the millions of workers in the trucking industry today, as well as the safety of the millions of Americans that share the road with them.

“The issue of parking spaces is not a niche, minor issue – it’s a core problem for our supply chain when truckers have nowhere safe and reliable to rest,” said Erik Peinert, Research Manager and Editor for the American Economic Liberties Project. “The lack of parking, combined with several layers of regulatory requirements for drivers, creates an impossible professional situation, leading to lower pay, unreliable delivery times and thus more supply chain disfunction. Given that none of this is within the control of drivers, the government must fund appropriate commercial truck parking in order to maintain safe and resilient shipping infrastructure.”

The global effects of Covid-19 disruptions on manufacturing, shipping, and logistics have revealed that not just our national infrastructure, long known to be in a state of disrepair, but that our commercial supply chains are also fragile. For decades now, the lack of available parking has been among the top concerns for the trucking industry and the millions of Americans working in it. The domestic trucking industry ships an overwhelming majority of the country’s domestic freight, and employs over 2 million truck drivers. These workers are the core of America’s domestic supply chains, working independently for long hours to keep our economy moving. 

While little known to the wider public, this problem of insufficient truck parking, and the campaign to expand it, has a 15-year history of policy complacency, all long before the disruptions of COVID exposed the fragility of American supply chains. H.R. 2187, introduced by Representative Mike Bost, plans to appropriate $755 million through 2025 towards the construction of parking for commercial trucks in order to maintain robust and free flowing ground transportation. 

Read the full letter to the Senate and House Committees here.  

Read more about the American Economic Liberties Project here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.