Evan Shelley’s journey into the world of trucking and logistics wasn’t planned – it was born from frustration, observation, and a willingness to find opportunity where others saw only constraints.
Today, he leads Truck Parking Club, a company tackling one of America’s silent infrastructure crises: the chronic shortage of safe, legal parking for commercial trucks.
A Real-Estate Mindset Meets a Logistics Void
Shelley’s professional foundation lay in commercial real estate and property development. He was accustomed to scanning undervalued assets, understanding zoning codes, and visualizing how land could be repurposed. But in 2021, a deal intended for industrial use hit a wall: municipalities rejected his plan for a truck parking facility despite clear demand. That setback felt like a lesson.
“When the municipality shut me down even on industrial-zoned land, that’s when the lightbulb went off – we needed a different approach.” – Shelley reflecting on the moment that sparked the pivot.
Instead of abandoning the concept, he reimagined how to unlock unused land without dependencies on heavy capital or government approval cycles. The answer? A tech-powered marketplace that lets property owners monetize spare capacity (and drivers reliably reserve parking) all without the delays of new construction.
Turning a Hidden Crisis into a Business Mission
Truck drivers in the U.S. spend an astonishing amount of time (often nearly an hour per shift) simply looking for a legal place to park. That inefficiency bleeds productivity, driver well-being, and trucking costs. Evan saw that as more than a market gap; he saw it as a structural weakness in America’s supply chain.
With the launch of Truck Parking Club, the model was simple (yet ambitious): connect people who own or manage land – warehouses, repair shops, industrial lots, storage facilities – with drivers in need of parking, via a reservation system. No new construction, minimal friction, immediate value for both sides.
From that spark, the company has grown rapidly. By mid-2025, they had onboarded over 2,100 locations, adding new properties daily. Their reach spans trucks, independent owner-operators, and enterprise fleets – split roughly 50/50 between individual drivers and fleets using the platform for operational flexibility.
But more than scale, Evan wants Truck Parking Club to become a data engine. The company now watches parking demand like a “heat map,” layering insights about regional supply/demand mismatches, revenue trends, and emerging usage patterns like trailer staging or multi-day parking.
The Grit Behind a Marketplace in Motion
Building a two-sided marketplace is never easy, especially one where trust and reliability are mission-critical. Evan candidly describes the challenge:
“From proof of concept to product-market fit is gruesome… you’re building the airplane while flying – the tech has bugs, operations is covering for it, and one bad review could sink you.”
He and his team obsessed over onboarding quality, user experience, and property vetting. They reject properties that fall short of critical safety or access standards, even if they look like promising additions. The reputation of the platform must be protected at all costs.
Those decisions – sometimes turning down “good enough” opportunities – are part of what separates a lean hustler from a scalable operator.
Tennessee as a Launching Pad for a National Movement
Though its reach is national, Truck Parking Club is grounded in Tennessee. Based in Chattanooga, the location isn’t just incidental, it places Evan and his team in the heart of America’s freight network, straddling I-75, I-40, and multiple key freight arteries. That proximity to corridors of real trucking traffic gives them boots-on-ground credibility and a living laboratory of demand fluctuations.
By situating the company in Tennessee, they combine local roots with national vision: it’s a reminder that infrastructure problems are felt most fiercely in small towns, rural corridors, and mid-tier markets – not just big coasts.
What Comes Next: Building Infrastructure Without Building
Evan’s aim is bold: to scale Truck Parking Club so it becomes the go-to layer of infrastructure across the trucking world. That means signing major fleets, integrating with logistics platforms, and widening beyond just overnight parking into trailer staging, overflow yards, and intermodal buffer zones.
The company has already signed deals with prominent partners like Prime Storage, targeting 100 locations, and begun monetizing warehouse yard space via their model. They also recently brought aboard Brent Hutto (formerly of Truckstop) as Chief Relationship Officer, signaling a push into large fleet partnerships and enterprise-scale operations.
But Evan still sees one fighter-entrepreneur inside: the nights spent cold-calling property managers, the long discussions convincing parcel companies or small warehouse owners that their idle land could be revenue, and the refusal to accept “this is how it’s always been.” That persistence is what turned a thwarted real-estate deal into a logistics revolution.
