As drivers, we spend a lot of time on the road looking for places to park. The gamut goes from travel centers, casinos, rest areas, welcome centers, shopping centers, shippers, consignees, wide spots on the road, and on and off ramps. Some of these areas are less than ideal or unsafe locations and possibly illegal, unlevel terrain, no facilities, loud neighbors, or rough neighborhoods. All of these conditions combined with reading the recent blog written by Linda Caffee where they were able to take their expediter truck into some nice campgrounds made me think if there might be a market for a semi-truck oasis.
In my mind, I began to wonder what would such a place as a semi-truck oasis look like? While looking at the campground where Team Caffee stayed there were laundry facilities, grills, pools, dog park, walking trails, electrical hook up, and showers. Most importantly let’s not forget a nice, clean, quiet, and level parking spot. My thoughts are this is a nice list but could it be expanded on? Could such a place also have a repair facility, small cabins to rent to get out of the truck, entertainment, golf course, fishing, health services, spas, shopping, movie theater, and a business center?
Some ideas to make this work would be a trailer drop area. HVAC hookups, shore power, internet with enough bandwidth to watch a movie, and a grocery store to buy something to cook on the grill.
All of these amenities sound like they would be really nice to have on a 34 hour or longer restart or when staging for a load. The big question is what would we be willing to pay to enjoy more luxuries facilities for our rest periods while away from home. The market has to be willing to support it for the investment to be made. What are your thoughts?