The short answer
A truck and trailer space typically rents for somewhere between $150 and $500 a month, and an acre of usable, well-laid-out ground holds roughly 15 to 20 of them.
That puts a workable acre somewhere around $2,500 to $9,000 a month gross, before costs. It is a wide range on purpose. Where your land sits matters more than anything you can do to it, and the difference between the bottom and the top of that range is almost entirely location.
Why the range is so wide
Three things move the number, in roughly this order of importance.
How close you are to freight. A lot within a few miles of a major interstate interchange, a port, an intermodal yard or a distribution cluster commands a premium, because the driver is paying to not add an hour to their day. The same acre twenty minutes off the corridor is worth a fraction of it.
Whether the space is secure and reachable. Fencing, lighting, cameras and a gate that opens at 3am are what separate a lot people book from a lot people drive past. A driver with a $200,000 tractor and a loaded trailer is buying peace of mind as much as ground.
What you are actually renting. A bobtail tractor, a 53-foot trailer, a full tractor-trailer combination and a reefer needing power are four different products at four different prices. Reefer spaces with electrical hookups sit at the top.
How many spaces fit on an acre
Do the arithmetic yourself rather than taking anyone's word for it, including ours.
An acre is 43,560 square feet. A tractor-trailer space is commonly laid out around 12 feet wide by 75 to 80 feet long, which is about 960 square feet of stall.
Divide and you get 45 — and that number is wrong, because it assumes trucks teleport into place.
Two rows of stalls sharing one drive aisle is already about 220 feet deep to hold 160 feet of stall, and that is before perimeter circulation, the entrance, and whatever your plot's shape wastes. In practice roughly a third to a little under half of the ground ends up as stall. That is where 15 to 20 spaces per acre comes from.
Two things push you toward the bottom of that:
- An awkward shape. A long thin strip wastes more to aisles than a square does.
- Back-in rather than pull-through. Pull-through spaces are far easier to sell and far harder to fit.
Try the calculator with your own acreage and local rate — it shows its working, so you can check it against your plot.
What comes off the top
Gross rent is not income. Budget for:
- Insurance. Your existing policy almost certainly does not cover commercial vehicle storage. Ask before you advertise, not after.
- Surface upkeep. Loaded trailers are hard on ground. Gravel needs topping up; asphalt needs patching.
- Lighting and power. Both the bill and the fittings.
- Someone to answer the phone, or a system that means nobody has to.
- Snow, weeds, litter, and the occasional abandoned trailer.
The last one surprises people. Have a written policy for it before it happens rather than after.
What we charge
Nothing per booking. We take no commission — the rate you set is the rate you are paid, and we charge a flat monthly fee for the software instead. A busy month and a quiet month cost you exactly the same.
That is the whole pricing model, and it is why the numbers above are yours rather than ours. See what it costs to list your yard.
Before you count on any of this
Check what you are allowed to do first. Zoning and permitting is what stops most truck parking projects, and it stops them regardless of how good the numbers look — see do you need permission to park trucks on your land?
Then check the ground itself: is your land right for truck parking?