House Highway Bill Would Boost Federal Truck Parking Funds

How much new federal money would the House highway bill direct to truck parking?

The House is expected to take up highway policy legislation after Memorial Day recess that would increase federal funding for truck parking, according to Transport Topics. The bill's specific dollar amount and allocation mechanism have not been disclosed in the source material, but the measure represents a direct response to the national parking shortage that forces drivers to park on highway shoulders and in unauthorized lots.

The timing puts the bill on the House floor in early June 2026, following the Memorial Day break. No vote date has been set.

Why Federal Truck Parking Funding Matters to Small Fleets

The truck parking shortage is a compliance and safety problem for carriers. Drivers who cannot find legal parking within their hours-of-service (HOS) window face a choice: violate HOS rules by driving past their 11-hour or 14-hour limit to reach a space, or park illegally on a ramp or shoulder and risk a citation. Both outcomes hurt a carrier's CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) score.

FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) counts HOS violations under the HOS Compliance BASIC, and unsafe parking citations under the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC if the truck is cited for obstructing traffic. A carrier above the 65th percentile in HOS Compliance triggers an FMCSA investigation. Small fleets with fewer than 20 power units can cross that threshold with a single serious violation.

Federal parking funding typically flows through the FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) to state DOTs (Departments of Transportation), which build or expand rest areas, truck parking facilities at weigh stations, and private-public parking projects. The BUILD America 250 Act allocates $110B for roads and bridges over five years, including infrastructure that supports freight movement, but that measure does not specify a truck parking line item.

What the House Bill Does Not Yet Specify

The source material does not provide the bill number, the dollar figure for parking funds, the allocation formula among states, or whether the money would be distributed as competitive grants or formula funding. It also does not indicate whether the bill would authorize new construction only or allow states to use funds for technology solutions such as real-time parking availability systems that feed into truck GPS and ELD (electronic logging device) platforms.

Carriers should watch for those details when the bill text is released. Formula funding spreads money across all states based on factors like lane miles or truck traffic volume. Competitive grants require states to apply and demonstrate need, which can concentrate funds in high-traffic corridors but leave rural routes without new capacity.

How This Fits Into the Broader Highway Reauthorization Cycle

Highway policy bills typically move as part of a multi-year surface transportation reauthorization, which sets funding levels and policy priorities for roads, bridges, and transit. The current authorization, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), expires in September 2026. The House bill under consideration may be a standalone measure or an early component of the next reauthorization package.

Truck parking has appeared in every major highway bill since the 2015 FAST Act, which created the competitive Jason's Law truck parking grant program. That program, named for a driver killed while sleeping in a parking lot, has funded 31 projects in 23 states as of 2025, adding roughly 3,200 spaces. Demand still far exceeds supply. FHWA estimates a national shortage of 98,000 truck parking spaces based on 2019 data, and the shortage has grown as e-commerce freight volumes increased during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

What Carriers Should Do Now

Carriers cannot wait for new parking capacity to come online. Construction timelines for rest areas run 18 to 36 months after funding is awarded, and state DOTs must complete environmental reviews and land acquisition before breaking ground. A bill passed in June 2026 would not produce new spaces until 2028 at the earliest.

In the meantime, carriers should:

• Route drivers to known parking locations during trip planning, using apps like Trucker Path or the Drivewyze PreClear weigh-station app, which includes parking availability data.
• Build extra time into dispatch schedules so drivers can stop early if parking is full at their planned location. A driver who parks legally with 90 minutes left on the 14-hour clock avoids an HOS violation; a driver who runs out of hours searching for a space does not.
• Train dispatchers to recognize high-shortage corridors (I-95 in the Mid-Atlantic, I-5 in California, I-81 through Virginia and Pennsylvania) and avoid tight delivery windows that force drivers into those areas during peak parking demand (6 p.m. to midnight).
• Document parking shortages when they cause delays. If a shipper or broker penalizes a carrier for a late delivery caused by the driver stopping early to find legal parking, that documentation supports a dispute.

What to Watch When the Bill Reaches the Floor

Once the House releases bill text, carriers should look for:

• The total authorization amount for truck parking.
• Whether funds are available only to states or also to private truck stop chains and logistics parks.
• Whether the bill includes language requiring states to share real-time parking data with the public, which would improve the accuracy of third-party parking apps.
• Any provisions tying parking funds to ELD data-sharing, which some privacy advocates oppose but which would give states better utilization data for planning new facilities.

The Senate will need to pass companion legislation before any funding reaches state DOTs. That process typically takes months, and differences between House and Senate versions must be reconciled in conference committee. Carriers should not expect immediate relief, but the House bill signals that Congress recognizes parking as a federal infrastructure problem, not just a driver inconvenience.