This week’s edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast picks up in part from where we left off in the intro last week, with the note from Carolyn Carroll on the utility she finds in paid parking reservations.
As noted last week, Carroll offers something of a practical counterpoint to the many who would shout down the ability to reserve spots — and pay for the privilege.
Owner-op Carroll called the ability to reserve spaces a godsend to her operation, going back to TA Petro’s introduction of its Reserve-It system in the years before mandated ELDs were in play.
As she wrote, “For a single female driver to walk through the parking lot in the middle of the night because I either need the restroom or am leaving early,” it was sometimes a little beyond comfortable for her. “Now with the reserved parking,” she said, “I am up front by the busy fuel aisles and no longer worry about my safety. Now that Flying J and Pilot have reserved parking, too, I am not worrying about where I will find a parking space.”
Carroll trains other female solo drivers, too, and tries to “stress the importance of safety out on the road.” Parking reservations now allow her to “drive until late in the night stress-free, knowing I have a parking space waiting for me. This is a good thing. I do not want to be stressed behind the wheel of my truck.”
We got on the phone earlier in the week to run through the subject in more detail, plus a variety of points about her now seven-year tour in trucking both in team and solo operations, as a company driver for a time and now leased –- she’s recently refinanced a lease-ending balloon payment on her 2015 Freightliner Cascadia she’ll be entirely finished paying off over the next couple years. The 5-foot-4 owner-op cuts a unique figure among most highway haulers, and she addresses the dynamics of being a woman among a largely male-dominated profession as well, though one among a clearly growing cohort out there no doubt. Take a listen:
