Big trucks often have few places to go when they're not at a shipping dock or rumbling down the highway.
That's one reason you might see them lined up along the side an interstate or parked randomly in an industrial area.
The American Trucking Association said there are more than 11 truck drivers for every one parking space, and the U.S. Department of Transportation said last year that 98% of truck drivers have trouble finding a safe parking spot. That's up from 75% four years prior.
In other words, it's a big and growing problem. And it's one that Austin-based startup Outpost hopes to help solve by buying real estate and applying its end-to-end tech stack to help drivers and the companies they work with more easily identify places to park.
The startup, founded in 2021 as Semi-Stow, announced on April 23 that it has raised $12.5 million in series A funding to help it acquire more real estate that it will use to offer overnight and long-term parking for truckers. The new investment was led by New York-based GreenPoint Partners, which backed the company on a prior investment round.
The fresh funding will help Outpost improve its operational capabilities and develop additional technologies to help scale its parking facilities nationwide, CEO Trent Cameron said. Outpost also plans to double the number of properties under management this year. That will be assisted, in part, by the company’s management of a $500 million industrial outdoor storage investment portfolio launched last year by GreenPoint.
Outpost has operations in Texas, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Columbus, Kansas City and beyond.
"Where we play is providing secure parking for the drivers, where trucking companies, as well as drivers, can park and relay freight, as well as house and terminal local drivers," he said. "We actually help them solve not only the overnight parking problem, but there's also a problem to the extent that trucking companies, especially small owner-operators and midsize fleets, have a hard time finding secure places to park and store their equipment."
For example, earlier this year Outpost opened a 12-acre, 350-space semi-truck parking facility, which includes an onsite maintenance facility and office space, about five minutes away from Interstate 70 in Indianapolis. Like some of its other sites, it has barbed wire and electric fencing, AI-powered gate automation, 4K security cameras, stadium lighting and plug-ins for engine block heaters and refrigerated trailers.
Cameron said there's plenty of competition in the truck parking sector, ranging from long-time truck stops, such as Pilot Flying J, and groups that own one or several parking lots.
But with so many trucks and seemingly endless growth in shipping and logistics in the United States, no single company will dominate.
"We think it's going to take a huge collaborative effort from a lot of people to help solve this problem," Cameron said.
Outpost is differentiating itself by being vertically integrated — owning the property, building the tech to monitor traffic and use computer vision to inspect trailers and vehicles, and managing the lots.
Outpost has 20 employees at its Austin headquarters at 210 Barton Springs Road. It also has seven employees at its research-and-development hub in Seattle.
Cameron said he expects to essentially double the size of the workforce over the next year.
"There's probably not a category we won't be hiring into," he said.
