How can truck parking yards measure local truck parking pages?

The FHWA Truck Parking Development Handbook 2026 confirms that corridor demand is highly dynamic, so a single occupancy number is not enough.

What do you need before you start measuring?

Pull these items before you open a spreadsheet.

• Your gate log or entry records for the past 30 days, broken out by spot type (tractor-only, tractor-trailer, trailer storage).
• The daily truck vehicle miles traveled (DVMT) figure for your corridor from your state DOT or the FHWA Freight Management Truck Parking page.
• The physical dimensions of each spot: width, length, and the drive aisle width serving it.
• The overnight permit rules for your jurisdiction, obtained directly from the city permit office.
• A count of competing publicly-owned spots within a 10-mile radius, available from your state DOT freight office or a Jason's Law survey dataset.

Once you have those five inputs, the three measures below take less than an hour to calculate.

What are the three measures and how do you define them?

Measure 1: Corridor access ratio. This is the number of parking spaces in your catchment area per 100,000 daily truck VMT on the corridor. The FHWA Truck Parking Development Handbook 2026 documents the national average at 10.0 publicly-owned spaces per 100,000 daily truck VMT. Your yard's spots count toward the numerator only if they are available to the public or to registered carriers. The denominator comes from your state DOT's freight traffic data.

Measure 2: Vehicle fit rate. This is the share of spots in your yard that can physically accept the reference design vehicle. The WB-67 design vehicle, the standard 73-foot tractor-trailer combination used in U.S. highway design, is the reference for sizing stalls and drive aisles. Per published industry layout guidance from BaseCore, a compliant stall is at minimum 12 feet wide and 55 feet long for a standard semi, or roughly 75 feet long for a truck-and-trailer combination. Drive aisles must be at minimum 24 feet for one-way flow or 40 feet for two-way flow, also per BaseCore.

Measure 3: Overnight permit lead time. This is the number of calendar days between a carrier's request and the first available permitted overnight spot. Overnight parking permit processes vary by jurisdiction. Washington D.C. DDOT issues permits for no longer than two days and requires no-parking signs posted 72 hours in advance at unmetered locations and 24 hours in advance at metered locations, per ddot.dc.gov. Los Angeles LADOT requires applications at least five working days before the desired date and charges $10 per day for oversize vehicle permits up to three days, per ladotparking.org. Your own yard's process may be simpler, but if you are advising carriers on public-street permits nearby, those lead times affect whether drivers can legally park overnight.

How do you collect the data?

• Gate log: export entries by date and spot ID; tag each entry with the vehicle type the driver reported at check-in.
• Spot dimensions: measure with a tape or pull from your original site plan; flag any spot that falls below the BaseCore minimums.
• Corridor DVMT: request the segment-level figure from your state DOT freight office or download it from the FHWA Freight Management Truck Parking page.
• Competing public spots: cross-reference the Jason's Law Truck Parking Survey Results published by FHWA, which maps publicly-owned supply by corridor.
• Permit lead time: call or email the city permit office and ask for the standard processing time; log the date you asked and the answer you received.

Hypothetical example: a 40-spot yard on a regional corridor

Hypothetical example. A yard operator in a mid-size metro has 40 spots.

That is above the national average of 10.0 documented in the FHWA Truck Parking Development Handbook 2026, which tells the operator the corridor is relatively well-served, not that the yard is full.

Vehicle fit rate: the operator measures all 40 spots. Thirty-two meet the 12-foot width and 55-foot length minimums from BaseCore. Eight older spots are only 11 feet wide.

Overnight permit lead time: the city requires five working days for an oversize vehicle permit, matching the Los Angeles LADOT standard. The operator logs this and posts it on the rate sheet so carriers know to plan ahead.

No benchmark is implied by these numbers. They are a starting point for tracking change over time in your own yard.

What are the common mistakes and edge cases?

Using occupancy alone misses the problem. Break your gate log into time bands: 6 AM to noon, noon to 6 PM, 6 PM to midnight, and midnight to 6 AM.

Mixing public and private supply inflates the corridor ratio. Only count spots that are actually available to the drivers on your corridor. A private fleet yard that never sells spots to outside carriers does not belong in your numerator.

Ignoring aisle width understates the fit problem. A spot can be long enough and wide enough but still unusable if the drive aisle is too narrow for a WB-67 to turn in. Per BaseCore, the end-of-row turnaround outer radius should be at minimum 60 feet, with 80 feet preferred. If your lot was designed for smaller vehicles, measure the turning radius before claiming a spot as WB-67 compliant.

Permit lead time is not a yard metric alone. ATRI survey data cited in the FHWA Truck Parking Development Handbook 2026 found drivers sacrifice an average of 56 minutes of revenue drive time per day searching for parking. If the nearest overnight permit takes five working days to obtain, drivers on your corridor are absorbing that search cost regardless of what your yard shows on its sign.

What should you do next?

1. Pull your gate log for the past 30 days and sort entries by time of day into four bands: 6 AM to noon, noon to 6 PM, 6 PM to midnight, midnight to 6 AM.
2. Measure every spot in your yard: width, length, and the drive aisle serving it. Flag any spot below the BaseCore minimums of 12 feet wide, 55 feet long, and 24 feet of one-way aisle.
3. Request the daily truck VMT figure for your corridor segment from your state DOT freight office.
4. Count publicly-owned competing spots within 10 miles using the Jason's Law Truck Parking Survey Results from FHWA, then add your own carrier-accessible spots to get total supply.
5. Calculate your corridor access ratio (total supply divided by DVMT units of 100,000) and your vehicle fit rate (compliant spots divided by total spots).
6. Call or email the city permit office that covers your address and ask for the standard processing time and fee for an oversize vehicle overnight permit; log the answer with the date.
7. Record all three measures in a simple spreadsheet and repeat the exercise every 90 days so you can see whether your yard's position on the corridor is improving or eroding.