Public truck parking by state: spaces per 100 miles of interstate

The federal inventory of public truck parking lists 39,803 truck spaces at 1,915 public rest areas, welcome centers and similar sites across the 50 states. Spread over 48,821 miles of interstate, that is 81.5 public spaces per 100 interstate miles, or 11.7 per 100,000 residents. The spread between states is wide: Delaware has 226.8 spaces per 100 miles, Hawaii has 0.0.

What was counted

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics publishes a "Truck Stop Parking" layer in the National Transportation Atlas Database: public rest areas, welcome centers and comparable state-run sites, each with a count of truck parking spaces, collected for the Jason's Law truck parking survey. We loaded every site with a positive space count (1,915 sites) and summed the spaces by state. Private truck stops are not in this inventory, so the figures below measure public parking only, which is the part a state transportation department controls.

Interstate mileage is the rural plus urban interstate figure in FHWA Highway Statistics 2024, table HM-20. Population is the Census Bureau's July 1, 2025 estimate (NST-EST2025). Two states, Alaska and Hawaii, have no sites with a space count in the inventory and show zero; that is a gap in the inventory as much as on the ground.

Spaces per 100 miles of interstate

Small, dense states lead because their interstate mileage is short: Delaware (226.8), Florida (199.5), Indiana (191.7), New Jersey (170.1), Ohio (163.6). At the bottom, after the two states with no inventory entries, come large western and southern states where long interstate corridors have few public sites: North Dakota (33.1), New Mexico (34.4), Colorado (34.9), Texas (35.6).

Spaces per 100,000 residents

Population changes the picture. Measured against residents, the rural states of the northern plains and mountains have the most public truck parking: Wyoming (139.3), Montana (61.4), South Dakota (37.8), West Virginia (37.0), Vermont (36.6). The most populous states have the least: California (3.2), Texas (3.9), Massachusetts (5.5), Colorado (5.5), Arizona (6.0). California and Texas, which together carry more freight than any other pair of states, are both under 4 spaces per 100,000 residents against a national figure of 11.7.

How to read these numbers

A high count per interstate mile does not mean a driver will find a space at 9 pm; it means the state has invested in public sites relative to the length of its interstate system. The inventory does not record occupancy, hours or whether a site is closed for the season. Private capacity is outside the inventory, so the public count here is a floor for what a driver will find, not the whole picture.

Drivers looking for an actual space can use the truck parking directory, which lists these sites by highway and mile marker, and the truck stop directory for private lots. The hours of service rules that make the search urgent are on the hours of service page.

Method and reuse

Sources: BTS National Transportation Atlas Database, Truck Stop Parking (sites with a space count); FHWA Highway Statistics 2024, table HM-20, interstate rural plus urban miles; Census Bureau NST-EST2025, July 1, 2025 state population estimates. Computed 2026-09-28. The script that produces every figure on this page is published with the site's source; the ranking may be reproduced with attribution to DriverComply and a link to this page.