Washington Just Spent $62 Million on Truck Parking. The Shortage Is Measured in the Hundreds of Thousands.
Summary
On July 7, 2026, USDOT handed five states $62 million to add truck parking spaces. The federal government's own most recent national count found 313,000 spaces nationwide for a truck-driver workforce many times that size — and 98% of surveyed drivers said finding safe parking overnight is a regular problem.
The last time anyone actually counted
Congress ordered a national truck parking inventory in 2012, under a provision known as Jason's Law, named for a driver murdered while parked on a highway shoulder because he couldn't find a legal space. The Federal Highway Administration's most recent full survey cycle — 524 truck stop operators, 18 port authorities, and 11,696 drivers, with preliminary results presented by FHWA's Jeff Purdy in December 2020 — found 313,000 truck parking spaces nationwide: 40,000 at public rest areas and 273,000 at private truck stops. Ninety-eight percent of the drivers surveyed said they regularly have trouble finding a safe place to stop; three-quarters said it happens at least once a week. FHWA hasn't run a comparable count since. The number the country is managing this problem against is now the better part of a decade old.
View data as table
| Private truck stops | 273,000 spaces | 87% of the 313,000-space national total |
|---|---|---|
| Public rest areas | 40,000 spaces | 13% of the national total |
The public sector — the rest areas states build and maintain with highway funds — accounts for 13 percent of the national inventory. The other 87 percent is private truck stops, which expand or don't at their own commercial discretion. In that same FHWA survey round, 79 percent of surveyed truck stops said they had no plans to add capacity. States can build more rest-area parking; they cannot make a private truck stop chain do the same.
$62 million against a 313,000-space baseline
The July round breaks down unevenly. Kentucky's $25 million adds spaces at seven rest areas across four freight corridors and funds a real-time parking-availability system. Mississippi's roughly $22 million expands one rest area and adds similar real-time signage. Illinois gets $13 million for 45 new spaces. Wyoming's $1.4 million goes to winter-specific parking improvements, and Louisiana's $640,000 is the smallest award in the round. Every dollar of it is traceable and every project is real. None of it is sized to the gap it's addressing.
View data as table
| Kentucky | $25.0M | 7 rest areas |
|---|---|---|
| Mississippi | $22.0M | 1 rest area expansion |
| Illinois | $13.0M | 45 new spaces |
| Wyoming | $1.4M | winter parking upgrades |
| Louisiana | $0.64M | smallest award |
Congress has separately set aside additional money for truck parking under USDOT's INFRA discretionary grant program, on top of the BUILD round above — these are competitive, multi-year, and awarded in similar increments. None of it is structured as an ongoing formula program sized to the shortfall; it is a rolling series of grant competitions that individual states have to win, project by project, rest area by rest area.
The takeaway
- The federal government's only full national truck parking count — 313,000 spaces — is from a survey cycle presented in December 2020. It has not been repeated.
- 98% of the 11,696 drivers surveyed in that count said finding safe overnight parking is a regular problem; 79% of surveyed truck stops said they had no plans to add capacity.
- The July 7, 2026 BUILD round put $62 million toward truck parking across five states — a real but incremental addition of spaces, not a recount or a program sized to the shortage.
- 87% of the nation's truck parking supply is privately owned; states can expand only the 13% they control directly.
This piece covers the current federal truck-parking supply count and one funding round; it does not track total truck parking investment across every state and federal program, which is not centrally tallied.
Sources
- Federal Highway Administration, Jason's Law Truck Parking Survey Results and Comparative Analysis — the program's founding report structure, established under MAP-21 (effective Oct. 1, 2012). ops.fhwa.dot.gov
- Trucking Dive, FHWA: 79% of truck stops don't plan on adding parking — reports FHWA's 2019 survey cycle preliminary results (524 truck stop operators, 18 port authorities, 11,696 drivers), presented by FHWA official Jeff Purdy in December 2020: 313,000 total spaces, 98% of drivers reporting difficulty. truckingdive.com
- Land Line Media, FHWA reveals updated Jason's Law truck parking survey — corroborates the 313,000-space total (40,000 public / 273,000 private) and driver survey figures. landline.media
- Land Line Media, Truck parking payoff: Five states cash in on $62M in grant funding — the July 7, 2026 BUILD award breakdown by state used in this piece's chart. landline.media
- Truckers News, $61.7 million awarded by USDOT to 4 states in increase truck parking — independent corroboration of the July 2026 award round (reports four of the five states, rounded). truckersnews.com
- U.S. Department of Transportation, Trump's Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Invests $1.73 Billion in Infrastructure Across America Supporting Jobs and Big, Beautiful Projects — the originating USDOT BUILD grant announcement (July 2026); page returned HTTP 403 on direct fetch from this network, so dollar figures here are corroborated via the two trade-press sources above rather than read directly off USDOT's own text. transportation.gov
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A tractor-trailer running federal hours-of-service rules has to stop and rest, by law, whether or not there's anywhere legal to put the truck. On July 7, 2026, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced $1.73 billion in BUILD grants for 127 projects nationwide, and five states — Kentucky, Mississippi, Illinois, Wyoming, and Louisiana — got a combined $62 million of it earmarked for truck parking, mostly new spaces at highway rest areas. It's real money and it will build real parking spots — a few dozen here, a few dozen there. It will not move the number that actually defines this problem: the country has roughly 313,000 truck parking spaces, period, and it hasn't recounted that number in six years because no one has funded a recount.