Seth: Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Seth Williams and you're listening to the REtipster podcast.

Today, I'm interviewing my new friend, Evan Shelley. So I met Evan not long ago through Ajay Sharma, actually. They have a history together and they know each other. And the reason I wanted to get Evan on the show is because I've been learning a lot lately about the industrial outdoor storage space. Part of the reason why it even came on my radar is because it has some similarities to self-storage investing, but it's arguably simpler.

The way this works is we're trying to create parking lots that are intended for industrial outdoor storage. And usually what that means is semi-trucks. Not always, but a lot of times that's what ends up happening here. Semi-truck parking is a problem pretty much everywhere in that there is a lack of it throughout the country. So if you can create a decent semi-truck parking lot with big enough parking spaces in a close enough proximity to a major highway, there's a good chance it's going to fill up pretty quick.

I met Evan because, as I was doing research on this niche, I came across his website pretty early on in my search. It's truckparkingclub.com. Truck Parking Club is just a wealth of information as we'll find out soon. And I just wanted to talk with Evan a little bit about how his website works, how the industry works, and try to pull out as much information as possible for the handful of us out there who have an interest in this investing niche. And if you don't already have an interest in it, maybe you will after this.

So Evan, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Evan: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Seth: Yeah, absolutely. So why don't you tell us what is truckparkingclub.com? What is this all about? What's the value proposition it brings to the table?

Evan: Yeah. So Truck Parking Club, it's like the Airbnb of truck parking. It's a two-sided marketplace where we help truckers find and reserve truck parking across the U.S. And we help property owners and businesses monetize their extra space.

That can be trucking companies, tow truck companies, truck repair shops, real estate investors, CDL schools, warehouses, any location that's suitable for truck parking that a truck can access in and out and can suitably park there. It can be a property that can go on truckparkingclub.com and you can start monetizing that space immediately.

Seth: Sure. The reason I came across your website, or at least one of the reasons, was that I was trying to find all the other truck parking locations near me. When I'm looking at new properties to try to convert them to this use or even buy existing ones out there in the self-storage world anywhere, it's a big deal to understand what other facilities are out there in your market, how many units they have, what kinds of units they have, what they price them at, all this stuff.

And I couldn't find anything like that for this kind of semi-truck parking lot, except for your website. They just kind of clearly laid out where a lot of the locations were. You know, I guess maybe not surprisingly, there aren't that many locations out there.

And I realize you probably don't have all of them accounted for, but is that kind of your objective? Like in a perfect world, would you like to have every single truck parking space represented on your website on a clear, easy to understand map so people could find them all?

Evan: Yeah. So I would first say that I think the industry just isn't mature yet. So there isn't a lot of data outside of Truck Parking Club. And we have 439 locations as of today. We had two to three new locations every day across the U.S. And I mean, it's my belief that there's tens of thousands out there.

So we're still very early on in this journey, although we do have a large presence across the U.S. And ultimately, you know, we would like to have as many locations as possible because that helps us give drivers more options. And there's a massive truck parking shortage out there. So the more supply we can bring onto our platform, the better we serve the driver and give the driver more options to find and reserve parking across the U.S.

Seth: Yeah, it's interesting because I was doing a lot of research on this in my local market here in Grand Rapids because I was looking at a couple different locations to do this at where there was not already a truck parking lot. That's not what it was being used for, but I wanted to change it so it would be used for that.

And so one of the big questions is, is there enough demand for this? And like, what can I charge per parking spot and all this stuff? And in order to really do that it's helpful if you can find comparable properties that are doing the same thing near you. I was actively searching for these things and I couldn't find them anywhere, but that didn't mean they weren't there.

The more I dug, I eventually found a couple of locations that were kind of just like off the grid. And you only know about them if you know the right person. Not surprisingly, both of these locations I found were crammed full. They didn't have room for one more spot. So maybe that's why they weren't advertising.

But do you know, how do most of these truck parking lots advertise? Is it just putting up a Google listing and that's all they do? Or do they have maybe one or two huge clients that park like most of their trucks there? Do you have any feel as for if they're not using you, how are they finding tenants?

Evan: So a lot of them are mom-and-pops and they'll do a lot of just on the ground, guerrilla marketing, telling people, going to truck stops, things of that nature.

And for mom-and-pop, their goal was just to fill up their lot as quickly as possible with local people, which is absolutely fine. I think that makes a lot of business sense is to fill it up with as long-term leases as possible, whether that's a couple of tenants or a hundred tenants, whatever they have to do.

I think probably not so dissimilar to self-storage, mobile home parks, things of that nature early on, just very simplistic marketing methods that work. I mean, they get results ultimately if you're in your market and you're local to your market. But I think as we continue to expand, we're really creating a ton more traffic to these locations just because we bring so much more awareness through a dozen or so different marketing methods.

Ultimately, we're raising the standard for what's going to be required to maximize your facility.

Seth: Maybe I should have covered this earlier, but how did you even come up with the idea to start this company? You used to be a land investor, right? How did you go from that to discovering this, and why did you make that pivot?

Evan: My background, went to school for civil engineering, got out, did construction and site development, gained a lot of skills in real estate. And I started buying houses in my late teens with just investors. I would find the deal, and investors would invest. And I still own some of those properties today, a decade later.

And I went into corporate America, like I mentioned, construction, site development. And then I just wasn't really happy working for someone else. So I went out and started flipping houses when I was 22 or 23. I did scrape by in the beginning. I finally got some good systems going and did pretty well at that. But that started kind of feeling a bit mundane.

So I started doing land deals and I started doing larger scale land deals. So I would do some vacant lots for residential or something, buy them cheap and flip them. But I would also do large commercial land deals, maybe a 20-acre piece of property that's currently zoned for one house. And then I would entitle it for 300 apartments and flip it to a developer. That really became my niche. And I would do that for industrial properties and anything that I could find that I thought it was a good deal.

And so ultimately, I had a deal back in 2021 that was zoned industrial. Everyone that I talked to was telling me that this was a great location for truck parking. There's a huge demand for it. There's not enough supply. Just create more and the drivers will come. And that was pretty true for a lot of markets.

And so I went to the municipality. I'm like, here's what I want to do. And they're like, we're not going to support it. We don't think the surrounding area is going to support it. I'm like, it's zoned industrial. And they're like, you can try to get it through if you want, but no one's going to support it.

And so I started thinking, if there isn't enough supply and the demand is there and continues to grow, what's going on all across the U.S.?

And so in 2021, I really started studying it and trying to understand, like, what's this dynamic? Who are the players? Like, what's the future look like? And being a real estate guy, I was like, oh, you just go build more. You just find the right sites where you buy existing mom-and-pops. This is going to be simple, you roll it up, classic roll up, simple stuff, right?

And what I realized, 2021, as everyone that's going to be listening to this knows, super hot market deals. It was a unique world at that time with the super low interest rates and real estate prices going up quickly. So it was tough to find a deal that I could deploy investor capital on.

I did raise some capital from a guy out in New York City and just never deployed any of it. I just never could get comfortable with the numbers. Everything was based on, well, the rents are 150 today per month per truck. They're going to be 250 next year. You know what I mean? You can just raise the rents and it'll be fine.

And I think a lot of people got burned that way, but I decided I was going to do it a little bit differently because I thought instead of going through the traditional real estate development process, there was a play for leveraging existing space. Anything that was suitable for parking, whether it's an existing parking lot, an industrial yard for a trucking company or whatever, anywhere that there was extra space.

I started really examining that space and realized that there's a huge market there and thought if I could build the right piece of technology, give the driver a great experience and really consolidate a lot of these locations, we could do something pretty special.

And so that's what we started doing in 2022 and and now we're here, at 439 locations.

Seth: Part of what you do is… I don't know if you're actively cold calling trying to find these people but what you can do is find people that have buildings with excess parking that they're not really using. They can basically convert that to semi-truck parking and then use you to help market themselves and you've even got some kind of light property management software?

Evan: Our new locations that come in are inbound they We market heavily through social and things of that nature. And a lot of people are figuring out about us pretty quickly at this point. And they reach out at their location. We get them onboarded. We do a little bit of outbound communication.

At this point, it's not our main source of lead generation, but it typically is going to be some location that's involved in transportation, logistics, trucking some way and just have extra space in their yard and we'll get them onboarded quickly.

And yeah, so I think the biggest thing is getting them in the business of truck parking when they're not in the business and not requiring them to hire someone to manage it. I mean, that's the biggest thing for these people that have extra yard space. They know the space is sitting there. It's like, well, I can't lease this little section of my yard. I don't want it. There's all these reasons just to leave it.

And what we've created is a really turnkey solution for, let's say it's a trucking company with 10 extra spaces for trucks and trailers in their yard. Not something you can really lease out, but it is something that they could generate pretty significant revenue on that they're not using. We'll get them in the business of truck parking without hiring anyone. We automate the entire experience from booking payment, customer service, payouts to you, managing the bookings through a parking management dashboard (just a light dashboard that is easy for these property owners, which we call “property members,” to manage their location).

Really just getting them in the business turnkey without them having to come out of pocket any money or strategize or think about how they're going to handle it or who they're going to give the additional work to. We've really automated the whole thing for them.

Seth: And is that the main way that you make money as a company is through that software? Do you have other ways to generate revenue out there?

Evan: Yeah, so we don't make money through the software. We make money through bookings. We make money by getting drivers booked and parked at their locations, and we take a cut of every booking from the property owner. That's how the business works for us.

And it's really just a matter of bringing more awareness to that location, getting the driver parked safely, getting property owner paid, and really making sure that both parties have a great experience and making sure we drive a ton of demand to these locations and that for every single person that comes to that location, everything goes well. And just this whole ecosystem of just making sure that customers on both sides of the marketplace are having a great experience.

Seth: So how much does that cost to use your software? Is there a percentage cut you take from each booking?

Evan: Yeah, we just take a cut of every booking. Our starting rate is 70-30 across the U.S. So if it's a truck company with 10 extra spaces in their yard, it's probably going to be a 70-30 split. 70 to them, 30 to us. We cover everything from booking, obviously marketing your property to tens of thousands of drivers, notification systems, payment processing, 24-7/365 customer service, and then the payouts of your money really automate that entire experience.

Seth: So if somebody is already using some other software to collect payments and that kind of thing, does that mean they would have to migrate and switch to yours? And if so, how complicated is that?

Evan: Yeah, so from what we've seen, there's a hodgepodge of payment processors. I mean, some people use Venmo. Some companies will use random payment processors and they just make it work. And what we've found is that you don't have to migrate anything; it's more like we're an add-on.

And then ultimately once a lot of these companies see how much value we provide, they typically just switch over to our service because we provide a lot of things that just a payment processor can't. Although a payment processor, maybe 3%, we provide a lot of value you that these companies think is worth it for them to just run a lot of their business through us.

Seth: Okay. And when you say 24/7 customer service, what does that entail exactly? Is that like, if somebody wants to call a number, you have a number they can call? Or if somebody's gate is broken or something like that in the winter, I know sometimes that happens here in Michigan with all the snow. Is there anything you can do to notify the owner or intervene or something? Or where does that start and stop this customer service?

Evan: Yeah, so it's really anything that the driver thinks they need or actually needs. Our entire ecosystem for truck parking is newer even for drivers. They they've always just kind of scrapped around and figured it out. I mean, right now, a lot of them park on ramps and off-ramps, and there's a level of people drivers calling in, saying, “What is Truck Parking Club? I'm looking at this location right now, can I really just book through the app?”

There's just a lot of questions, it's just an education process. So a good part of it is just education. Like, “Hey, I'm looking at Seth W.'s lot here in Grand Rapids and it says $20 a day. Can I really just book right now? I'm going to be there at 8 o'clock tonight.” And then just talking them through that.

And then once they call in once, a lot of times they're kind of hooked with us for life if we have locations available for them and as long as we deliver them a great experience. And so that's a really common one.

And then there are the less common ones, like a driver can't get in because there's an issue at the gate. And rather than putting all those calls on the property member, we try to receive as many of those calls as we can because a lot of times it's just a matter of answering the call and talking with the driver about what's going on. And in the instance that it's a technical issue or, say, an issue with the hardware on the gate or whatever the case may be, we'll coordinate and make sure that the entire thing is resolved as quickly as possible.

So really just taking a lot of the work off of the property members for us to resolve those things. And ultimately, I think that's a big part of that. Taking those calls is what I think a lot of truck parking guys that are already in truck parking are like, wow, this is a lot of work taken off of us. Just handling these calls may only take five minutes, but you get a few of those a day that can really, really start to add up.

Seth: I wonder if somebody, maybe they don't want to do the 70-30 split, but they do want, “I want to pay you maybe 10% or like an annual fee” or something. They don't need all the software and booking help. They just want to get listed on your app and your website. Is that an option or do you have to go all in with the 70-30 split?

Evan: Yeah, so it's really going to depend on the situation. Yes, we'll go lower than 70-30. I mean, there are companies out there whose business is truck parking, and that's what they do, and they have five, ten lots. And we're driving additional revenue to them and the other ancillary things they're not as interested in.

It’s interesting that the more we work with them, the more they become interested in it, just because of the level of service we provide to our customers. But we will come down from that rate for someone like them.

But for someone who isn't in the business of truck parking and just has some extra space sitting there, it's not being used, and you'd have to essentially go build out all your own systems and processes and manage your own customer service, typically we're not going to come down from that rate. Because we know for a fact that the value we provide is actually much more than 30%.

And ultimately, there is no platform in the U.S. that has the demand for trucks where we have tens of thousands of drivers coming to our app, actively looking to find and reserve parking. And we know that comes with a lot of positives and a lot of revenue generation for properties all across the U.S.

Seth: Do you have any stats on how many truckers are actively using your app every month or every day or anything like that?

Evan: Yeah, so we don't really publicly give away those numbers. What I'll say is that tens of thousands of drivers a week come to Truck Parking Club to find and reserve truck parking all across the U.S. Tens of thousands of bookings on the platform, 13,500 spaces, 439 locations.

And I think the stat that typically gets people's attention is at this point, a lot of times locations will start getting bookings the same day they onboard their property.

The first time it happened, maybe nine months ago or something, I was like, that's wild. And now it's more like we expect it. Like, onboard your property, a lot of times you'll start getting bookings within a few hours. I think the record's like 18 minutes or something from first onboarding, which is kind of surreal.

I mean, at that point, we haven't even been able to market it. It's just organic people on the site looking around for parking right when it was added. So we have a good ecosystem of drivers actively looking for parking.

Seth: Yeah. So some questions on market research, and I don't know how much you really know about this. I'm sure you have anecdotal ideas and stuff. But for people who want to start this kind of business where it's a parking lot specifically for the purpose of long-term semi-truck parking. It's like a storage facility for semi-trucks. How can a person determine if there's demand for this kind of thing in the market? What measurable things could they be looking at?

And I know a lot of the people that I've talked to are in places like Atlanta, Dallas, or some huge city with a lot of truck traffic going through it. And it just makes me wonder, if I were to open up this thing in the middle of nowhere, but it's right next to a highway, will that work? How do you really know? And maybe there is no way to really know, but do you have an idea? What should a person be looking at to assess whether their location is. Assuming you get everything approved by the township or the city, whether that location is a viable location for this kind of thing.

Evan: Yeah, so I think the best really thing I can answer is I'm continually amazed to see the locations that get bookings. I'm talking middle-of-nowhere Kentucky, really no major interstate, I mean hours from an interstate, but even just U.S. highways, state highways, I'm talking an hour from maybe 30, 45 minutes from a Walmart far out, and they get bookings.

Now, I think there's probably a pretty direct correlation between number of bookings and distance from an interstate. There's probably a pretty good correlation to that. And as you get further away, you'll probably get less. But there is a bit of demand anywhere. We have a couple (I wouldn't say insanely rural, maybe like population of the city is 10,000; I would think insanely rural is like 1,000 to 3,000 or something), but those locations get a good amount of bookings, and I'm continually amazed by that.

I think it just shows you drivers live everywhere, and there's really a bit of a demand everywhere.

But I think, as you mentioned earlier, historically, drivers have had such a hard time finding a reliable place to find reserve parking. There was just never really an ecosystem for that to exist. Now these drivers go to Truck Parking Club anywhere they are, whether they're over the road or they're home. They're constantly looking for better opportunities. And maybe right now they're parking it in a grocery store parking lot in their hometown, hoping that that grocery store doesn't eventually tell them not to park it there anymore. And then they hear about Truck Parking Club, check it out, and say, wow, this is 10 minutes from my house in the middle of Kentucky somewhere. And so I would just say there's no sure way to determine demand at this point.

But I would also add to that that I'm continually amazed with the amount of demand that can come from a lot, really anywhere.

Seth: Do you have any sense as to how much money people are making from these things? And I know that's a wide open question. It totally depends on everything. But do you have any examples of, yeah, this person has a parking lot with 40 spaces in it, and they're telling me they make X amount of dollars per month take home. Any idea like that just to figure out what kind of money we're talking about?

Evan: Yeah, I mean, we see all the data, right? So we process all the payments. So we're able to see data for all of our locations. You know, we have 439. An overwhelming majority of them have gotten bookings. And so I think as far as that's concerned, really we're the only ones with the only company that has any data on that at this point, because we've just aggregated so many properties and have enough users to push the demand.

And, you know, we have properties that do mid five figures a month that the first month they came on, they did less than a thousand dollars and now they're doing mid five figures. So it's just an organic business that's grown for them.

Seth: When you say mid five figures, you mean like 50,000?

Evan: Yeah, 50, over $50,000 a month.

Seth: And that's their gross revenue, right?

Evan: That is their revenue that we pay them.

Seth: So that's after they pay your fees, that's how much they would get as their gross income?

Evan: Yeah.

Seth: Yeah, that's pretty good, though.

Evan: Yeah. I mean, considering the specific location I'm thinking about. Yeah, I think the very first month we did less than a thousand dollars. And so it's been pretty rapid growth every month for the last nine months or so. And I think that's one example.

I mean, they have plenty of spaces, right? And they're in the Northeast. So they have some built-in demand. So there's a lot of positive things working for that one.

But let's talk about something else. We have a location that has 13 spaces. And kind of like clockwork, every single month, they're netting about $100 per space, just every month netting. And this is a location that runs no monthly. They only do hourly, daily. And it's just like clockwork. So that's another example of a small 13 spaces that makes $1,000 a month. And that property owner is ecstatic. I mean, it runs itself.

And, you know, we have locations that are 40 or so spaces that may do $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 a month.

Seth: These locations that sound pretty successful, do you know, like, are they all right next to the highway? Or are they all in big cities? Or is there any common thread where it's like, this is why they're doing good because of these things?

Evan: Yeah. Well, the first one has tons of things working for it, and that's why it's grown so quickly and done well. What's working for it? It's in the Northeast. There's a lot of built-in demand in the Northeast. They have plenty of space at that location.

Seth: When you say there's a lot of demand built in in the Northeast, why do you say that? Is it because there's not enough demand? Locations for it or something? Or is there more trucking there than other places?

Evan: I wouldn't say there's necessarily more trucking. Maybe it's less built-in demand and more lack of supply; maybe that's the better answer. Maybe a bit of a combination of both, but definitely a lack of good, safe, available parking in the Northeast. And I think that just works in the favor of that particular property member, and is why it's been successful.

Yeah, there's just a lack, I think, thereof. There's a bit of a lack everywhere, but I think in this particular area, just to have reliable parking, it's nice to have.

Seth: Is that particular location in a big city, like right by a highway? Are those things true?

Evan: Yeah, sorry. I don't even think I answered that question for you. Yeah, near interstate, near a big city, a lot of things, positive things working for it.

I would just say that for that particular type of location, I mean, I couldn't even imagine what that land actually goes for. I think it's a less realistic example for a real estate investor who doesn't want to spend millions and millions and millions of dollars, right? So I was trying to think of some examples where it's a more realistic real estate market where an investor can get in and create a nice truck parking business and generate some great returns.

Seth: On that thing, and you probably know about this, but several of the parking operators that I've have talked to, they don't even own the property. They just lease it from the owner and then they basically create this business on it and sublease out the spots on land they don't even own.

They're really just trying to create a source of cash flow. And that kind of thing, I think, is a really smart play. Even if you can handle the financial risk, it's still kind of a good idea because you don't need to tie up all your own cash with a giant deposit. A liability for owning the property. You can use somebody else's property to make the same amount of money. And it's just a lower barrier to entry, it seems.

Evan: Yeah, I know. And I don't think I had mentioned that. A lot of truck parking operators do lease their properties. So it's really just making the alpha between what you can lease it for and then individually renting out spaces, which is kind of classic real estate, right? You take an office building, subdivide it. There are a lot of examples of that in real estate. And that's just another example of it.

Ultimately, I think it really just comes down to the numbers, right? If you can buy it cheap enough, you should buy it. If you can lease it for the right price, you lease it. I think, just talking about truck parking operating operators, there's a handful who are really imperative to buying. And I think ultimately you look 10 or 20 years down the road, they're probably going to do extremely well.

But also, I think the leasing model for flexibility makes a ton of sense as well. So, you know, I think it's all about risk vs. reward and what makes the most sense. I mean, at the end of the day, returns, right? Like, what are your returns going to be in 10 years?

Seth: You mentioned that there, and I guess I've seen the same kind of thing. At least it's my hunch that there's a lot fewer of these parking locations in the northern states for some reason. And maybe I'm wrong. I'm kind of just saying that based on my gut.

And everybody I talk to seems like most of them are doing this somewhere in the southern half of the U.S. Looking at your map, though, I mean, there's plenty of locations in the northern parts, I guess.

But, do you think I'm right? And if so, why do you think that is? Is it because there's more snow and complications? Is there some perceived lack of demand when there actually is a lot of demand in the northern part of the U.S.?

Evan: I think there's a lot of focus in and around Chicago right now, which I would consider north.

Seth: Yeah, for sure.

Evan: And I think there's a ton of demand there as well. Right. So I think there's a lack of supply—a pretty big lack of supply.

Seth: There is. I just drove through Chicago this weekend. There is an insane amount of trucks going through that city. I mean, it's just so many. It's overwhelming. So it makes a lot of sense.

Evan: Yeah. And there's a few truck parking operators that are pretty entrenched in that city, which is cool to see that there are some guys that have been working for five or 10 years building stuff out there. And so I think there's quite a few locations there because of that.

But ultimately, in the north, as in Minnesota and Wisconsin, things of that nature, I think there's a huge issue without enough available truck parking.

Seth: Do you ever see it with people who use your service? Does it ever happen where somebody's like, yeah, let's start using this for truck parking. We're going to use truckparkingclub.com for this. Let's go. And they put it on the market and nobody comes. Like a year goes by, nobody shows up, or at least not enough to make it like a sustainable cash flowing operation.

Does that ever happen? And if so, why would that be if that happens?

Evan: Well, you don't really hear about it because people aren't going to talk about it. I have seen examples of truck parking lots not doing well. And you get aggressive and you go in and you have high hopes and it doesn't work nearly as well. I've seen it, but I'm extremely entrenched in the business and I see a lot of that. But I would say if you ask most people, they'd be like, no, they all do well.

Seth: And that's a very common thing I see. A lot of times, when people crash and burn in their business, they would never come on a podcast like this and talk about it. They're not interested in that. Maybe they're embarrassed. I don't know. But there's a lot to be learned from that.

So when you see these locations that start and fizzle out for whatever reason, is there anything you can observe about why that might be? Are they too far out in the middle of nowhere or is it too small or I don't know? Anything come to mind?

Evan: I can think of three right now.

And two of them were, I think, a little bit far out. Didn't understand the market dynamics mix well enough. And ultimately, for those lots, I think we were the only ones to ever get them bookings, including themselves. And that was just the power of just having our marketplace and having a lot of drivers looking for parking, but they just couldn't figure out the business as a whole. And we weren't big enough at the time to just drive all their traffic. And they were on a lease. And I think they had some kind of out and got out in a couple of scenarios that I can think of.

And then there was another one recently in an area, I'm not going to go into any specifics. I would never want to out someone at all, but in an area that does have plenty of demand and they just randomly shut down. And I know we were driving a pretty good amount of demand, but I couldn't imagine what they were paying for that real estate. And I think the numbers for them just didn't work. And once again, we just weren't at a place at that point to drive 100% of their traffic to be able to support their lease. I think it's gotten better, but I think there was a lot of underwriting in the last couple of years that just made no sense.

In those models, I think there was so much assumption on rent growth that was wrong. I mean, when I started in 2021, I was imagining what the rent growth would be. And I was like, if this is true, the values of these properties are going to double in the next few years. And I think a lot of people thought the same thing. Fortunately, I never bought any, but I know some people did, and I think they're just trying to hang on and figure it out.

But there are a lot of positive dynamics that help a truck parking business.

Seth: Do you ever see people who come to you and they want to convert their property to a truck parking like this, but maybe it's like, five miles from the nearest highway and way out far away from the city?

When you see something that's too far out, and maybe if that's the reason why it didn't work, any opinions on how far out is too far out? What's the maximum distance it should be from a highway or a big city?

Evan: I think the thing that works with our model for these farther out locations that still get bookings is that typically these property owners own it for some reason. They're sitting on it. There are lots that they're just sitting on, and you can park a truck there, and they're not going to do anything with it in the short term. And so their basis is essentially zero because they bought it for some other reason. And maybe it's something they inherited or whatever the case may be.

I don't think it's a wise decision to go out and buy property that's in the middle of Kentucky or Tennessee, not close to anything with the assumption that you're going to fill it up. I think you'd have to do a lot of market research and feel extremely confident before I would do something like that. You really need to know your market. So I'll give you that.

But also, with that being said, if you do your market research properly, there are probably some very rural areas that need it. And you could probably do very well because we've seen it lots.

Most of our rural lots are owned by some type of business owner who already has some property sitting there that they're not using. And we've seen them generate thousands of dollars a month in an area where they honestly should not be making that much. It's just the magic of the marketplace we created. So they're ecstatic because they were making zero and this is just additional revenue for them.

But for me to sit here and think about, okay, what if someone had just come in, bought that property and exclusively is trying to rent it for truck parking. And what if we hadn't driven that demand? That's a tough one. I don't know if that's a great move.

Seth: Yeah. Maybe it's a little early on, I don't know, but it seems like you're sitting on a gold mine of data. Your company, given that not everybody has access to this data and maybe you need more to really draw conclusive insights and stuff.

But I wonder if it might make sense for you to hire a data scientist or something to really figure out how to make sense of this, like with these numbers and these areas, with these demographics and this pricing and lots of stuff you could you could look at to probably triangulate and figure out when a location is or isn't a good idea. And maybe you give good AI involved or something to make sense of this.

Evan: I agree with you completely. I think we're getting to that point. I mean, we have, at this point, hundreds of thousands of data points that we can push into models and understand better. I think, up until recently, it wasn't even something I really thought about.

And as we're getting 439 locations, we'll be to 1,000 before you know it, hundreds of thousands of bookings, we'll have a lot of data to crunch and be able to pull some really specific insights out. So I think the timing is definitely becoming right to where we can start putting together data sets that could probably be very useful to people wanting to get into the truck parking business.

Seth: The first time we talked, I think you had mentioned something about how… or maybe it was me who mentioned it. Somebody mentioned that it makes sense to put one of these parking locations in an area where a lot of semi-truckers live. Because these truckers can't just pull their semi-truck into their driveway and park it there. They need someplace to put it.

And it makes me wonder, how do you find out where semi-truckers do live? Is there some data somewhere out there where it explains, “Oh, yeah, in this county or zip code, there's this many people who do this profession.” You know anything about that?

Evan: I don't know of any data source that does that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It probably does somewhere. I'm sure, you know, if you put enough thought into it, there's probably a way you could break down existing data. And if you had to like cross-reference stuff, you could probably make it work.

I do think if you had that data point and you're trying to build a truck parking lot for long-term parking, I think that's a good way. I think you could definitely get pretty quickly into that kind of that self-storage type of modeling if you determine trucks per household, supply in the area. And at this point, there would be some assumptions made, but you could probably get a model that relatively gives you some sense of certainty if you wanted to put that together.

Seth: Do you ever get that information? If people are booking stuff through you, can you figure out where those people live or what their billing address is or something?

Evan: Yeah.

Seth: It might not necessarily mean they live there. It could just be the address is there.

Evan: And there's need, right? And some of these guys, let's just say we have their address, but maybe they park at their company's terminal down the street. You know what I mean?

So then you have to have enough data to say, well, in our opinion, 43% of drivers need a place to park, right? And then the 57% of drivers have it figured out, whatever that means. And maybe in the beginning, you just make the assumption of, we'll say 50% of these drivers need parking. The other 50% I haven't figured out. And drawing those assumptions, you could probably put a model together.

I guess we probably could with the data that we have. It's just, yeah, to be honest, we feel as if there's so much market left out there that we're just in a mad dash to just continue growing. And we don't think too much about, like really targeted type marketing. I know, like you've mentioned, there's probably a good amount of people that would really want that data. And perhaps that's something we should be doing. But me and my team are extremely focused on growing the number of locations.

Seth: It's just fascinating the more I learn about this. It's like the bluest ocean business I think I've ever seen.

And it reminds me a lot of what land was 15 years ago, when the data was really hard to get and a lot of the stuff was just hard to do because there weren't that many people doing it and nobody really understood why it was even important. But it was super easy. And I can really say that, especially relative to today, it was super easy to make money at it.

And this just reminds me a lot of that. The demand is clearly there. But, how do you prove that and quantify that when there's not enough comps? There are no feasibility studies for this kind of thing, like there are in self-storage. So if you try to go to a bank and get financing for it, they're like, what are you talking about? What is this business? We don't know anybody who's doing truck parking. Like, prove that it's going to work. But how do you prove it when the data is not there?

Evan: Yeah, I think some of the bigger players and truck parking operations business specifically. I know one of them, he never worked with a bank. It's all his own money or private investors. Which is not surprising, right? And I think a lot of these other companies have just gone out and raised it.

And I think part of it, some of these larger guys have been able to do it because if they raise enough equity, then the banks will just fall in line. But the smaller guys, I would suspect—personally, I've never tried to get along on like a single truck parking lot or anything, so I don't know—it is probably a heavy hurdle. I think how some people have gotten around that is to say, I have this tenant that's ready to sign a lease, or I have a signed lease that starts in six months, or… I don't know, I'm just making something up. But maybe it gives the bank a little more certainty.

But then that kind of defies the whole point of just doing a truck parking lot where you're renting out essentially individual spaces.

Seth: So say if somebody comes to you, they have space, they want to start doing this kind of truck parking thing. What do they have to do or what do they have to get ready before they can start renting out these spots?

Like, do you need proof from the municipality that they're allowed to do this? Or do you need proof that there's a fence or a gate or lighting or cameras or anything? Or is it, no, you can do this in the middle of a field. We don't care. We'll help you. We can't prove that it's legal or anything, but we can get you up and running.

Evan: So speaking from Truck Parking Club, we're very thorough and we're only going to onboard things that we believe are suitable for truck parking. There's no way around it. We will not risk our reputation by taking locations.

I mean, we've had a little bit of everything try to be submitted. Front yards, backyards, and middle deserts. We had some kind of little desert village thing that got submitted. Although very interesting and cool-looking, we thought it was highly likely a truck would end up getting stuck or damaged.

So you see a little bit of everything and it's our job to make sure that every single driver that books at our lots has a great experience. They get parked safely. They leave safely. So that's what we're obsessed with.

Seth: So when you say no to one of these locations, are you kind of just making a judgment call? Like, yeah, it looks like you're going to get stuck there. So no. Or, oh, we checked with the city and they said no. So we're saying no. How do you make that decision?

Evan: We have a very thorough onboarding process, and every location has to essentially hit these items, and if they don't, we will not onboard that property. We've got it down to a fine science at this point.

And when we onboard a property, you have to be a thousand percent sure that if you start getting bookings 18 minutes after they go live, everything has to be in place, full visibility. And so we just got it down to a science at this point. In the beginning, it was very clumsy and messy and I just obsessed over trying to get it right. And now we have it down.

It’s just a fine-tuned machine because it has to be that way. And I would say it is proprietary for us, but we just have certain things that you have to hit and if you don't hit those things and we're not going to take it. But it just is what it is.

It probably hurts the most when there are locations that are close, it's like, oh man, it looks like a good spot, it looks like this, but access just isn't. They want to remove that island, that curb, and cut out that sidewalk. I don't know, I’m just just making stuff up. But something where you know it's like, dang, it sucks, but it's a no. Truck Parking Club is not going to risk a driver having a bad experience because we really just wanted to put that property on our platform.

Seth: Yeah, I guess that probably falls back on you to some extent, right? If everything is branded with your stuff and they try to rent it, it's terrible.

Evan: 100%. It's like, think about if you have a bad Airbnb experience, whose fault is that, right? Yeah, you're going to be mad at the property owner, but it all comes back to Airbnb at the end of the day, and then Airbnb is going to have to figure out what to do.

It's the same exact thing for us. That's the beauty of a marketplace is that it keeps everyone accountable. The hard part about a marketplace is that it keeps you accountable, and you have to be onboarding properties with 99.9999999% accuracy or you're going to fail.

Because what value do you provide if every time you book at Truck Parking Club, you have a bad experience? We'd be out of business by now. You really have to execute. It's a very important part of the business. It's probably the most important part of the business, and it's probably the one that people think the least about.

Building a marketplace app is extremely easy. I built ours with a couple weeks myself, the first version, the MVP. Obviously, we've probably had 10,000 or 20,000 iterations of it since then. But it's extremely easy to put an app together. It's extremely easy to find a name for it. But it is all the things that have to do with, in our situation, the driver's experience that make it extremely difficult to execute.

Seth: Yeah, the devil is in the details, isn't it? It's like the hardest things are, like I said, makes me wonder, aside from that, which sounds like a massive challenge, like enough to make a lot of people not even try, honestly, what are some other big challenges with running this kind of online platform? Is there anything you deal with day to day? Or maybe you have things that you've figured out, but they used to be really hard. What's been hard about this?

Evan: I think in the beginning, onboarding appropriate properties. You can't just onboard properties. You then have to get drivers to come to those properties, and then the driver has to have a good experience. The property owner has to have a good experience with the driver, and then you have to give that driver such a good experience that they want to come back.

The problem with that is, that driver used you in Dallas, and now they're in Atlanta, and you don't have anything in Atlanta yet because you're a young marketplace. So then that driver looks at your app again and says, dang, Truck Parking Club doesn't have anything in Atlanta or whatever, insert city. And so that driver then forgets about you.

And so in the beginning, that was just extreme to get a driver to come back because you don't have another spot for him. So it was just a lot of reps and a lot of just grind, just grinding, booking five bookings, 10 bookings, 100 bookings. It was very painful for that.

And then I think you get to the point where you have a few thousand users and you're starting to scale and it's like things are breaking from a technology standpoint. You're having to iterate constantly. You're having to create things to handle the customer and the way the customer is using the product. And then, on top of that, this entire time, you have to be making sure that your customers are happy enough with the app and happy enough with the experience to come back and use you again.

So you're juggling a lot of balls at the same time, and then it becomes like hiring the right people to run these different departments to then have the same culture that you had when it was just you. And if you can get those people in place and they have the same culture, it is managing those million things that they each have to work on that keeps the customer experience great and continues that pretty extreme growth.

I don't know if I did a great job of answering your question, but I think it's just classic market issues that pretty much any successful marketplace has to deal with. And they either figure it out or they don't. It's creating more supply. It's making sure your customer has a great experience. It's scaling out a great team. It's scaling out the technology to make sure that it can handle the growth and isn't impeding the customer's experience.

I mean, it's just kind of all those things combined. It's quite a juggling act that you just kind of gather.

Seth: Yeah, I'm sure. What you're saying there, it seems like an almost insurmountable challenge. But when you think back to when this site was in its infancy, like a week after you created it, how do you get people to sign up and start paying money for this when you don't have value to offer in terms of an audience? Like, why would a person do that? Is it just like, oh, this is cool software, maybe that's helpful. And is that the reason they sign up?

Evan: Man, I just thought there was something here. And I just worked like crazy for months. And I think it took me months to get my first booking. And I was just doing whatever. I was just hoping somebody would see it. And I was creating our socials and hoping someone would see us on socials.

And it took a long time to get the first booking. And when I got the first one, I couldn't even believe I got one.

Seth: Was there ever a time when you're like, “Man, I'm barking up the wrong tree. This is dumb. Nobody's ever gonna come.” Did that ever happen?

Evan: Pretty much every day. And even after I got the first booking, I think it took me weeks to get the second. So it wasn’t like just straight up from there. And then even when you start getting a few bookings let's say you get a couple a day and then you get zero for three days, you're just like, what's going on? It's all falling apart.

And so getting any type of user retention is nearly impossible. And it takes you essentially quarters to even have a shot to feeling like you have something. I don't think I felt like we really had anything until maybe 10 months in, nine months in. I'm like, I think we have something here. And that's thousands of bookings. And I think we have something.

But then you have, you know, these random things happen that you could never predict, like random technology issues and stuff that maybe craters your site for a few hours or a day. And you're just like, okay, everyone's going to leave us now. But, you know, I've loved the journey. And I feel like we're honestly just getting started and that we have plenty of growth from here and that we have a lot of cool things we can do.

Seth: Yeah, it probably helps that, I mean, I don't know if you're the first to market with this. Maybe you are. But there's not a ton of other websites out there that are doing precisely what you're doing at the level that you're doing it.

That probably makes it… “easier” is not the right word, but more viable. Knowing that like, hey, there is a need for this. It doesn't really exist in the form we're trying to build. Is that right, do you think?

Evan: Yeah. You know, what I say is we were not first to market technically. There was a couple of apps that showed up in like 2017, I think around the same time. And one of them ended up pivoting to container storage because they couldn't figure out how to get daily truck parking figured out. And then another one, I think, just sold. They sold into another company and they shut it down.

So I and I knew about one of those companies as I was starting this company, like that they had tried to do it and it didn't work. So we weren't first to market, but Google wasn't first to market either. And I just had a feeling that there was something there and no one had ever been able to get the product to market fit.

I mean, there's always been a handful of apps that say they're truck parking apps. They've always kind of been around. If you go look around now, you could probably find some. They may not have any users, but it's sitting there. And maybe there are people trying to figure it out. I'm not sure, but I think I was just crazy enough to say, well, these other two companies couldn't figure it out, that did have the resources to try to get it done. And I think I can figure it out.

And so I just thought the market dynamics were there for the opportunity. And I just didn't stop, and I think that's a similar way that I approached real estate when I was doing real estate.

Seth: Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “It's not that I'm so smart. It's just that I stay with problems longer.”

So maybe you're kind of an example of that. Other people just didn't have what it took. They didn't have the patience to figure it out. And there is an answer, but someone's going to have to go on a long ride to figure this thing out.

Evan: Yeah.

So I'll add to that. I talked to one of the founders of one of those companies. I know I know both of those early founders now, and one of them, he told me the story about why they pivoted, and that was pretty early on after I started this company, maybe a few months in, where we were starting to get a little bit of traction. And he was like, “Man, I just couldn't figure it out. Customers were having bad experiences with the app and like, blah blah blah.” Like, “It was only a daily booking. So it's like 20 bucks. And then we weren't making that much money on it. So you have to do thousands of these to make any money.”

And also, he's like, “I just had a goal and it was to create a business that that was very valuable. And we found a niche and we stuck in that niche.” And they did create an extremely valuable company, like hundreds of millions. And he's like, “But if you can figure this out, this daily parking thing that you're working on and you really care about the customer and make sure they have a great experience, this is an extremely valuable company. I couldn't figure it out, I created a little bit of a different business and it was very successful, but if you can figure this out, this will be extremely successful.”

And I'll always remember him telling me that. And that, you know, I think I was maybe when he told me that five months in, four months in, starting to get a little traction, people kind of talking about us a little bit. And that really told me like, yeah, I think my gut feeling's right here. And hearing it from a guy who had been trying to chase it down for three or four years and couldn't figure it out, gave me the belief that it was there and it was possible, even though we still hadn't figured it out at that point, but it definitely gave me confidence to keep going.

Seth: Is this kind of work fun to you? How important do you think it is that this is an enjoyable thing for you to work on this day-to-day in terms of you being able to last as long as you have and make it through those hard times?

Evan: Oh, yeah. You got to love it. Just be obsessed. If you don't love it, don't. I mean, I would say for our particular business, I'm sure there's plenty of companies where the founder has created it and been extremely successful and they didn't really care about it.

I would say that for this particular business that we're dealing with, dealing with drivers who are very tribal, and if you don't give them a great experience and you give them horrible customer service, they will leave you and they will tell everyone about how bad you are. So if you're not genuinely concerned about the driver (44% of our staff are former drivers, so we genuinely have the culture of caring about the driver by way of hiring because I'm not a former driver myself), if you genuinely don't care, which means you don't love it, a business like this, I think, would be doomed to fail.

That's not true for every business, right? But I think it was imperative for me from the very beginning to be in love with what I was doing. I would say that in the first couple months of me doing it, I wasn't in love with it at that time. I just thought there was a huge opportunity. But as I got to get a few bookings and know my customer and hire some drivers that came on and did do customer service and various things in the business, I just kind of fell in love with the entire culture. And that's when it was just like, Truck Parking Club is is solving a really big problem for drivers.

And so that's when it kind of shifted more from “this could be a valuable business” into a really mission-oriented thing that created an obsession and love for what we're doing. And I think, honestly, everyone on our team—we're 18 or 20 people now—has that same mindset.

Seth: Yeah. It is kind of interesting how there are a lot of problems or inefficiencies or just issues that exist in the world in our everyday lives. And we just kind of accept it. Like, that's just how it is. You know, truck parking is just a hard thing. It's just really hard.

But this stuff, it goes on for years until somebody has the idea to actually do something to fix it and puts in the work to actually do it. And the funny thing is, these issues are out there for all of us, we all have daily encounters with this stuff, but we're just not thinking about it through the lens of, hey, maybe there's a business idea for that that I know how to fix.

If anybody's out there looking for a business idea, just think about stuff like that, like things in life that are just like rotten and not fun and miserable, and nobody has a way to fix that. Because there probably is a way to fix it; you just have to put the work and thought into doing that.

Evan: 100%. No, I agree with that 100%.

And I think one of the biggest reasons that I did it was because, as I'm sure everyone can resonate with, there's been a handful of times in my life up until I started this business that I saw something that I was like, man, that's an opportunity. There's something there, right?

And outside of maybe one other attempt, I pretty much just said, I made some reason, right? And I kept doing my real estate stuff, which I do very much love real estate, but some other venture outside my comfort zone where it was like, I see this thing, this thing could be fixed. Why don't I go fix that thing?

Just for whatever reason, life goes on, right? You think about it, and a month goes by, and you think about it again, and six months go by, and you're like, oh, I never did anything about that, and it just never happens. And then you look back, years, and you're like, they did it, someone else did it, not me.

And funny how the world works, around the same time that they started it was when it hit me as well, where it was like that's something that could be solved. And so I've had a few of those experiences. I'm sure everyone has. And I didn't do much about it. And I came across this and I said, this is one I'm really going to give it my full effort. And I'm going to see if I can do something about it.

And then, like you said, like it doesn't mean just because you end up committing to it doesn't mean that the problem is solved. You then have to go bang your head against the wall for a long time and then it may or may not work. But I just put in that extra effort for this one. And then it started showing some results eventually.

And then I'm just like, okay, this is cool. Let's just keep solving this problem.

Seth: Yeah. It's like ideas are just a multiple of action. If you've got a million-dollar idea and you do nothing, you multiply by zero, you got zero, you got nothing.

So it's funny because I think a lot of times, a lot of people can probably, you know, relate to this if they're honest. I'll have these thoughts about great things I want to do or like people I want want to help or something, but I don't actually do it. And I give myself a pat on the back just for having the thought, which is ridiculous, because I've solved no problems. I've just had a thought in my head, which means nothing because I didn't do anything.

But I think a lot of us do that. Like we have the, like, man, that's a brilliant idea. Pat yourself on the back, Seth. You had a great idea there. But it's the actual action-takers that make all the difference in the world. And most people aren't action-takers.

Evan: Yeah. I think you see these CEOs and founders of these extremely successful companies. And I think pretty much something you hear, they'll all say it a little bit differently, but pretty much all of them are like, “execution is everything.” Like, it's the entire thing. And like, how many of these very successful business people… you don't hear about it that much. But in the first year of the company, first six months of the company, the first two years of the company, they pivot, right? They had this idea, they were going this direction, and then they pivot, maybe 60 degrees, and then kind of go into this a little bit different vertical, and then it blows up, right?

And so that was just action, execution, evaluation, and pivoting when necessary. And I think that action moving forward with an imperfect idea is way better than inaction trying to create the perfect solution to this idea that you have, and only starting to move forward once you have that perfect solution. I think that's essentially just another form of procrastination.

Seth: Yeah, totally. Do you ever get tempted to pivot? Like, do you ever see what other people are doing? Like, I wonder if we should do that. Like, maybe we would blow up if we went a little bit to the left and went that way.

It sounds like the answer is no, but I'm wondering, like, how have you maintained such focus on this thing that hasn't necessarily, I mean, it's certainly done well, but it's not like a hundred billion dollar company yet. So like, how do you stay focused?

Evan: So I think it's my job, and I think I honestly just read a lot of biographies about successful CEOs and founders, and I've listened to a ton of podcasts with successful CEOs and founders, and the one thing they always say is focus. And even though I've done all that work before starting this company and while running this company, I still have to refocus myself, and I still have to refocus my team.

And I think one of the biggest things keeping this together is we created a north star kind of mission statement, that Truck Parking Club helps truckers save time and fuel by efficiently finding and reserving truck parking across the U.S. So everything has to fall into that box, whatever we're working on—save time and fuel, right? So getting them to their destination faster because they're not looking around for truck parking for an hour and finding it efficiently, finding reserving. So doing it through the app or the website.

Ultimately, it keeps us in line. So even if it's a technology thing, if we're focused on a technology thing, is that technology thing keeping us in line with that mission? Or are we creating something for one user because he's annoyed?

And so it kind of eliminates a lot of the things and I have to remind myself and my team. And I think that's just human nature. But we know what the goal is with this company, we know what the mission is, and like you mentioned earlier, it's a huge blue ocean. And although it sounds so simple—it's a huge blue ocean; just stay focused on it. You know, in three hours, I'll be on a call with someone on my team and we'll talk for five minutes about something that is not in that right direction. And then we have to get back and focus.

But that's just human nature. It's life. And I'm a bit of a broken record on it, though. Like talking to my team and talking to people who ask me about it. It's just like, we're just focused on that. That's all we're focused on.

Seth: Yeah. And along that, I mean, on one hand, I think that's really heroic that it's focused, but I'm wondering like, what would have to be true for you to say, okay, we are going to pivot. Like we've been doing this wrong. We got to do something else. Like, would somebody have to show up at the check for a few million bucks? What would be the thing that tips the scale?

Evan: We've had a lot of companies come and try to acquire us even this early on, and that's not an interest at all. Or even an investment from an investor that we think may just have different interests. We don't really pay that any attention.

Ultimately, I think it would just be providing more value to the driver. We're so driver-centric at this point. It would have to have something to do with providing the driver so much value you like we do now. It would have to be something that fits into that box. And honestly, I don't really see anything like that, that we would spend any time on. This is a huge problem, and it's going to remain a huge problem until the federal, the state, and local governments put in funding, the private truck parking operators continue building more, and then thirdly we continue leveraging existing space.

And if you do all those three together, if we execute on our end and the other two players execute on their end, I think we’ll have significant impact. And in 10 years, we'll be like, man, we made a huge dent in this thing, this huge issue for drivers and this truck parking shortage. And that's the excitement and that's the problem.

And perhaps the pivot, the real possible pivot I could see is, changing the business model some to where we solve the problem even better. I could seethet world in which it happens. I just haven't heard anything that really makes a lot of sense outside of what we're doing at this point, but that would be a possibility.

Seth: Awesome, man.

So if people want to find out more, just go to truckparkingclub.com. Anything else they should do or check out?

Evan: Yeah, truckparkingclub.com. All of our socials are in the footer. So if there's any social that you'd like to be on, we're on it too. I guarantee it. Very active across all the socials. Me personally, I'm active on LinkedIn. So feel free to shoot me a message on LinkedIn. You can add me on there and message me.

And yeah, that's really the best way. There's a Contact Us form on the website. You can hit us there as well. If you have general questions, looking to be employed, or have certain skill sets that you think are interesting.

And also if you have a property, you can go right to truckparkingclub.com, click “become a property member” and add your property right there. And then we'll reach out to you about approvals.

Seth: Awesome. Sounds good. Thanks again, Evan, for your time. I'll sit on the edge of my seat and eagerly anticipate seeing where this company goes. I'm sure it's going to be awesome. I look forward to it.

Evan: Yeah, I appreciate it. I appreciate the time.

Seth: You bet.