By Rig Hut
David Gysin had run extended stay hotels in Georgia for 20 when he stumbled into truck parking. It wasn’t a calculated pivot—just a conversation with a truck parking entrepreneur last fall that got him thinking. By winter, he was scouting properties. By spring, he’d found 4.5 acres in Calhoun, Ga., hidden behind an asphalted lot with a controlled access gate.
Four months later, Superior Truck Parking started filling up daily with a mix of monthly tenants and overflow traffic from the nearby Love’s truck stop. His counterintuitive strategy? Set up shop two miles from his biggest competitor and let their capacity limits drive business his way.
Starting From Absolute Zero
“We started with absolutely nothing,” Gysin explains, standing in what’s now a 130-space facility. “Nobody knew us. Nobody knew this lot existed. I didn’t know anybody who was a truck driver or who owned a trucking company.”
The property looked nothing like the orderly operation visible today. Gysin and his partner spent a month just cleaning up the mess, making repairs and striping 130 spaces across the asphalt. They opened in early May with a simple philosophy: Build it one driver at a time.
The location decision that initially caused Gysin the most anxiety has become his biggest advantage. The nearest Love’s travel stop fills up by 2 to 3 p.m. daily, and when desperate drivers can’t find parking, they discover Superior Truck Parking just two miles away.
“The Love’s here is free to park for truck drivers,” Gysin notes. “So as a result, they fill up very quickly every day. Two, three o’clock they fill up and truck drivers have a very difficult time finding parking. That’s where we come in.”
The Daily Grind of Building a Customer Base
Every afternoon around 4 to 5 p.m., Gysin and his partner/associate heads to the nearby Love’s with fliers. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s effective. They hand out information to drivers who couldn’t find parking, letting them know about the clean, secure alternative just down the road.
“Just because we built it, it did not mean that ‘if you build it, they will come,'” Gysin admits. “We had to go out and make our mark. Every flier is like a seed—
drivers might not come that first time, but the next time they cycle through this area, they’ll give us a try.”
The hands-on approach extends beyond marketing. Coming from a hotel background, Gysin obsesses over cleanliness and customer experience. The lot gets blown weekly, grass stays trimmed and any repairs happen immediately. They installed their own bathroom and shower unit rather than continuing to rent one, giving drivers amenities typically found only at major truck stops.
“A lot of drivers have said that it’s almost like being at home,” Gysin explains. “Truck drivers drive all day. Once they park, they want to either get food, use a bathroom or relax. We’ve created that environment.”
Operational Realities of a New Truck Parking Business
Superior Truck Parking surprised Gysin in its first months. He expected mostly nightly business but quickly attracted 20-30 monthly parkers—local drivers who needed a secure base. The mix has balanced out as word-of-mouth and consistent marketing including social media brought in more overnight customers.
The 90% asphalt surface with numbered, striped spaces keeps operations simple. The controlled access gate—integrated with Rig Hut’s management system—provides security that particularly appeals to female drivers, a growing segment of the trucking workforce.
Pricing stays competitive with nightly rates (24-hour stays) as well as weekly and monthly prices. The rates work because drivers value the security, cleanliness and amenities in a quieter setting than the bustling truck stops.
“Some of the other lots are wide open. They don’t have gates. They don’t have any kind of security,” Gysin observes. “Drivers feel safe here, especially female drivers. That sense of safety is very important these days.”
The Replication Strategy
Four months in, Gysin sees the model as entirely replicable for operators willing to put in the work. The hardest part isn’t operations—it’s finding the right property in the right location.
“If you can find the lot, if you can find the land, you can build a truck parking lot,” he says. “The hardest part is finding the right piece of property in the right area.”
His two-mile distance from I-75 works because it’s easy to navigate—just two turns from the highway. But it required patience to find it. Gysin spent three to four months scouting before discovering this hidden gem.
The daily routine remains hands-on. Gysin or Jerome are onsite constantly, talking to drivers, asking about their routes, their companies, their experiences. It’s customer service that builds loyalty in an industry where drivers have limited options for safe, clean parking.
Final Thoughts
Superior Truck Parking proves that truck parking success doesn’t require prime highway frontage or massive scale. Sometimes the winning strategy is positioning yourself to solve the problem your larger competitors can’t—capacity constraints.
Gysin’s overflow approach works because he identified a gap in service and filled it with intention. Clean facilities, reasonable rates, genuine customer engagement and persistent marketing turned a hidden lot into a destination drivers actively seek out.
For self-storage operators considering truck parking, Gysin’s story offers a roadmap: Find properties where demand exceeds supply, invest in security and cleanliness, and never underestimate the power of showing up with fliers and genuine interest in your customers’ needs. In a market with 11 trucks for every legal parking space, there’s room for operators who solve problems one driver at a time.
Watch a video interview featuring an interview with Gysin here: https://youtu.be/MQYMIVcdCsE
Rig Hut is one of the largest and fastest-growing technology platforms serving the managed truck parking and industrial outdoor storage industry. Built by truck parking operators for truck parking operators, the company’s vertical B2B technology helps facility owners and operators streamline operations, enhance security and maximize profitability—whether managing a single lot or a multi-facility portfolio. Rig Hut’s platform enables multi-channel, short- and long-term booking options to optimize space utilization, simplifies payments and collections, integrates access control and delivers robust reporting for data-driven decision-making among much more Learn more at www.therighut.com.
