Updated October 22, 2026

Parking at a Shipper or Warehouse

A delivery address is a door with an appointment. It is not automatically a place to spend the night. Shipper and warehouse yards are private, they are usually missing from this directory, and the hours you sit there may or may not count as off duty. This page is how to tell those facts apart before you arrive early. It is general information, not legal advice. The hours-of-service sentences were checked against FMCSA’s driver’s guide on October 22, 2026.

Why the yard is probably not on this site

This directory is built from FHWA’s Jason’s Law truck-parking survey and from OpenStreetMap places tagged as truck parking, rest areas, or truck stops. A private warehouse is in that data only when someone mapped it as truck parking or sent it in as a submission. If you have permission to use a yard and the lot is missing, the way to add it is add or claim a lot. Sending the form does not publish the pin by itself. The about page describes the check that happens first. Do not send a customer’s gate code, a door schedule, or anything the shipper told you not to post.

Permission is specific

A rate confirmation that names a delivery time is permission to make that delivery. It is not permission to arrive the night before and sleep in the driveway. Ask the shipper, the receiver, or your dispatcher whether you may park on their property before the appointment, for how long, and in which row. A text or an email you can show the guard is worth more than “the broker said it should be fine.” If the answer is no, you need a lot you can leave in time to make the door. Find it while you still have driving hours. When the first overnight lot is full is the backup, and it has to be a backup you are allowed to use.

Some facilities have a signed staging lot or an overflow row. Use it only as signed. Do not block the gate, the fire lane, the scale, or the neighbor’s street while you wait for someone to answer the phone. If the guard waves you to a specific row, park in that row. The wave is the permission. The row next to it may belong to another carrier’s drop trailers.

Drop-and-hook and a live load are different parking problems. Drop the trailer only when they told you where to drop it. Unhooking in a lot that said “no drop trailers,” so you can bobtail to a restaurant, is how trailers go missing and how you miss the appointment. Bobtail stalls at a nearby truck stop are explained in reserved, paid, and bobtail signs.

Arriving early can cost the hours you needed

Many docks will not check you in before the appointment window. Showing up 10 hours early can mean a refusal, with the 14-hour window already running and the nearest truck stop full. Plan the 10-hour break at a lot you can leave in time to cover the drive, the check-in line, and a little delay. FMCSA’s summary says a property-carrying driver may drive a maximum of 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, and may not drive past the 14th consecutive hour after coming on duty. Off-duty time does not extend that 14-hour period. The text is in 49 CFR 395.3. The break has to be finished before you need those driving hours for the door.

If the appointment is the reason you are taking a 34-hour restart, the yard has to be willing to hold you for the full 34 hours, and you have to be relieved of duty for that whole streak. A restart you have to interrupt to move off their property is a restart you start over somewhere else.

Parked is not the same thing as off duty

The driver’s guide says on-duty time includes all time at a plant, terminal, facility, or other property of a motor carrier or shipper, or on any public property, waiting to be dispatched, unless you have been relieved from duty by the motor carrier. It also includes loading, unloading, supervising, or attending your truck, and handling paperwork for shipments. The definition is in 49 CFR 395.2.

The same guide says that for time to be off duty you must be relieved of all duty and responsibility for performing work, free to pursue activities of your own choosing, and able to leave the place where your vehicle is parked. It also says FMCSA excludes from on-duty time any time resting in a parked commercial vehicle, with an exception the guide points at 49 CFR 397.5 for hazardous-materials attendance. Read 397.5 if you are placarded. This page does not summarize it.

Put those sentences together before you log the night. If you are waiting to be dispatched and the carrier has not relieved you, the guide calls that on duty. If the facility will not let you leave, you are not “able to leave the place where your vehicle is parked,” which is part of the guide’s off-duty description. Paperwork, loading, and standing by the door because they might call you any minute are work. Resting in the sleeper after you have been relieved is the usual way drivers get the 10 consecutive hours in 49 CFR 395.3(a)(1). If you are not sure which status the carrier wants, ask dispatch before you start the break, and keep the answer. Guessing “off duty” because the truck is parked is how 10 hours disappear in an audit.

Yard moves have their own rule. The driver’s guide says a yard move is on-duty not driving, and it may not happen on a highway as defined in the regulations, including a private road the public can drive if it is not restricted by signs or gates. Moving from the street into the dock is not a blank spot on the log. If you are a team using a split sleeper, a yard move in the middle of a qualifying rest period is something to sort out with the log before you assume the split still pairs.

The street outside the fence

Industrial parks collect “no trucks,” time-of-day limits, and weight limits on the streets around the dock. The shipper’s permission to be in the yard does not extend to the curb, and a refusal at the gate does not make the curb legal. How city truck parking rules work is the way to check a local rule without this site inventing one. If the legal overnight choice is a truck stop or a rest area back on the highway, that is the choice. Rest area or truck stop for 10 hours is the comparison, including the time-limit problem we refuse to guess.

An oversized or overweight load adds the permit. The yard may be the consignee and still be unable to take your length overnight. Ask before you leave the permitted route. Where an oversized load can stop stays with the permit and the entrance, not with a standard stall.

A practical sequence

1. Confirm the appointment window and whether early arrival is accepted.
2. Ask, in a form you can keep, whether you may park on the property before that window. If the answer is no, pick a lot on a directory page you can still reach. Interstate routes and the state pages are the map. They are not permission to use a private yard.
3. Start the 10-hour break only after you are relieved, and only in a place you can leave when the break ends.
4. Log loading, paperwork, and waiting to be dispatched the way 395.2 describes them.
5. If the guard gives you a row, use that row and stay out of the fire lane and the gate.

Sources: FMCSA driver’s guide (April 28, 2022), 49 CFR 395.2, 49 CFR 395.3, and FMCSA HOS summary.