A bevy of readers responded to news of the debate around the Federal Highway Administration’s request for public input on whether the rules governing states’ commercial activities at rest areas ought to be changed to allow for more vending and produce, for instance, as a means to help states keep the facilities open. The overwhelming majority of responses were to the affirmative, particularly if such a move might preserve most of today’s rest areas as a parking option — or eventuate in more available spaces.
The National Association of Truck Stop Operators, as previously reported by Overdrive‘s Matt Cole, “says expanding commercial services at rest areas, including even vending machine services, threatens to undercut truck stops and other off-highway businesses. The group wants FHWA to keep the existing rules in place that limit the services states are allowed to provide at rest areas.”
Commenters believed in large part that the organization’s concern was misplaced, particularly if services allowed at state-facilitated rest areas are limited to an extent they aren’t at truck stops. One commenter, posting as Bossychell, perhaps put it most succinctly, “A truck driver is not going to pass up a decent sit-down meal at a truck stop for a vending-machine snack. The fact remains that there are not enough places for the trucks to park and anything that offers more parking spaces is something myself and all the drivers I know would be in favor of.”
Rest areas, however, are certainly a favored spot under today’s hours rules for shorter breaks like the mandated 30-minute break in the regs, and many readers expect them to assume greater importance as more of the industry transitions to electronic logging devices. Hear a variety of views from the Overdrive Radio podcast line on the subject at top at the head of the Mailbag playlist and in the podcast that follows.
Frequent commenter and owner-operator Pat “JoJo” Hockaday urged drivers to utilize their intimate knowledge of the parking situation along their routes to influence Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to the positive, which could eventuate to the benefit of both commercial truck stops and public rest areas dedicated to trucks, where the need is greatest.
Prior Overdrive coverage outlined a tool Hockaday also shared, AskTheTrucker.com’s nationwide MPO directory, where drivers can easily look up the appropriate contact for any particular area of the country.
