A veteran truck driver in Georgia has launched a free online platform designed to help truckers find parking, locate roadside repairs, compare diesel prices and access other resources without paying subscription fees.
Shawn Gresham, a 17-year commercial driver and founder of Trucking Life Academy in Dalton, Georgia, said his Trucking Life With Shawn platform currently lists 2,031 truck parking locations across 45 states.
The directory includes 1,882 truck stops, 78 dedicated truck parking lots and 71 hotels that accommodate commercial trucks. It also features 259 listings for truck repair, tire services, roadside assistance and heavy-duty towing, according to Gresham.
“Truckers get nickeled and dimed to death across a hundred different apps: one for parking, one for fuel prices, one for HOS math, one to study for the CDL,” Gresham told FreightWaves. “I built one place, by a trucker, with all of it, free.”
Gresham said the directory has been under development since July and is now being made available to the public. He said 80 listings were added over the past 30 days.
The platform does not display real-time parking availability. Instead, it identifies locations where drivers may park, with listings marked to indicate whether overnight parking has been confirmed or remains unverified.
Drivers can search by state, interstate and exit number, rather than downloading an app or creating an account.
“The directory itself comes from something personal,” Gresham said. “I ran 17 years with a paper truck stop guide on the dash and wrote my own notes all through it.”
He said the online version is designed to recreate that experience on a smartphone, allowing drivers to quickly identify parking locations and roadside services along their routes.
During a demonstration with FreightWaves, Gresham showed how drivers can select a state, interstate and travel direction to find truck stops and parking locations along their route.
A separate repair directory allows drivers to locate towing companies, tire services and other repair providers near interstate exits.
Gresham said the feature was inspired by his own experiences trying to locate assistance after a breakdown.
Instead of searching multiple websites and calling companies that might be dozens of miles away, drivers can identify services near their location and contact them directly through the directory.
The platform also includes a diesel price board that Gresham said is updated daily.
Drivers can compare estimated prices by state, region and city, along with using a calculator to evaluate potential fuel costs.
Gresham, who also works in fuel operations at Rosedale Transport, said he uses diesel pricing information supplied by Love’s Travel Stops to help populate the platform.
“It’s not perfectly average, but it gives you a good idea of what that state’s going for that day,” Gresham said.
He said the information could help drivers and fleets make more informed decisions about where to purchase fuel along their routes.
Gresham is also developing a truck navigation system and trip planner, which he expects to release publicly on New Year’s Eve.
The GPS system is currently being tested by 87 working truck drivers, according to Gresham.
He said the pilot program has allowed developers to identify and correct navigation problems before making the system widely available.
One early issue involved delayed turn notifications, which Gresham said has since been addressed.
The accompanying trip planner is designed to help drivers identify potential stopping locations based on their routes, weather, traffic conditions and remaining available driving hours.
Drivers must manually enter their available hours of service, and Gresham emphasized that the tool is not an electronic logging device or a replacement for federally required hours-of-service records.
The system is intended to identify potential parking locations before drivers exhaust their available driving time.
Gresham said he has intentionally limited access to the GPS pilot while testing continues.
“I didn’t want a brand new driver to use it, and then it did something wrong,” he said.
Drivers interested in participating in the pilot can contact Gresham through the website.
Although the platform’s driver tools are free, Gresham said the website generates revenue through several channels.
Those include sales of his trucking books and guides, affiliate commissions from Truck Parking Club and paid featured listings for businesses such as repair shops.
Gresham said Truck Parking Club is working to integrate its reservable parking locations into his directory, allowing drivers to access paid parking options through the platform.
He receives affiliate compensation when users book qualifying parking through the referral arrangement.
Gresham said drivers can continue using the free parking directory without purchasing a reservation.
The platform also includes CDL practice tests, educational articles, study guides and a sleeper berth split calculator intended to help drivers understand hours-of-service calculations.
He said the goal is to consolidate resources that truckers might otherwise access through multiple websites or subscription services.
“Drivers never pay, and they never will,” Gresham said of the platform’s driver tools.
The online platform follows Gresham’s efforts to establish Trucking Life Academy, a CDL training school in Dalton built with equipment and other contributions from drivers and businesses.
The academy is scheduled to open this month, pending final state approval.
Gresham previously told FreightWaves that he established the school in response to concerns about the quality of CDL training and the preparation of new commercial drivers.
The school plans to limit classes to six students and initially offer training over eight weekends.
The new online platform expands that effort beyond prospective CDL holders to drivers already working in the trucking industry.
Gresham said the parking directory is now publicly accessible, although he does not yet have meaningful usage figures because the service is newly launched.
He said working drivers can submit additional parking locations and corrections, which he reviews before publishing.
“Parking is a huge problem,” he said. “I just want truckers using it.”
Why it matters: The platform aims to give truckers easier access to parking and operational information without requiring multiple paid subscriptions, although its parking directory does not provide live space availability.
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