Truck Parking Club, the paid parking giant inspiring love or hate among drivers and shifting the industry toward more monetized parking, runs a tight ship.
The tech platform's not just an "Airbnb for truck parking." It marshals paid social media influencers, has a financial relationship with a top industry publication, and has spent years policing online reviews and trying to shape the conversation around the big shift it's bringing to parking.
In May, Overdrive tried to talk to TPC CEO Evan Shelley, typically an open book, about a social media flare-up involving a fed-up driver looking at a long line of empty TPC-run spots.
Overdrive had a bunch of questions: What's the deal with TPC and Super Ego? Will TPC ever make good on its promise to finally start accepting truck stop points for parking reservations? Just how much of what we see on social media about TPC is paid ads?
After repeated outreach and no response, in the weeks that followed, Overdrive got a public relations pitch to interview Shelley as an expert on solving the truck parking crisis, and eagerly accepted. Still no response.
So as a journalistic outfit dedicated to telling stories that matter to owner-operators, Overdrive set out on getting the inside story of Truck Parking Club from six former and current employees.
What came out was a lot of praise, a lot of drama, and a few skeletons in the closet.
Finally, Shelley agreed to an interview to confirm or deny, agree or disagree with the characterizations from the employees. What resulted is this three-part series:
