Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast

Can Rig Hut Revolutionize Truck Parking Solutions?

• John Farquhar & Chris Harris • Season 2 • Episode 110

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Solving the Billion-Dollar Truck Parking Problem with Rig Hut

In this episode of the Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast, hosts discuss the billion-dollar truck parking issue with special guest Jake Gusso, co-founder of Rig Hut. Jake introduces Rig Hut, a truck parking technology focused on optimizing industrial parking spaces for landlords. 

They explore the severe shortage of truck parking across the U.S., its implications for drivers, and how Rig Hut's platform offers solutions by automating inventory and access control, making parking facilities more efficient. 

Jake shares insights on the evolution of Rig Hut, the importance of secure and managed truck parking, potential revenue opportunities for landlords, and future outlooks for truck parking management.

Contact Jake:
Rig Hut
jguso@therighut.com
https://www.therighut.com

Your Hosts

John Farquhar
National Risk Services Specialist, Transportation, Gallager GGB
https://www.ajg.com/ca/
M: 437-341-0932
John_Farquhar@ajg.com

Chris Harris
CEO, Safety Dawg Inc.
905 973 7056
Chris@SafetyDawg.com
https://safetydawg.com/

00:00 Introduction to the Billion-Dollar Truck Parking Problem
00:13 Meet Jake Gusso: Co-Founder of Rig Hut
00:57 The Truck Parking Crisis Explained
03:19 How Rig Hut is Revolutionizing Truck Parking
05:31 Challenges and Solutions in Truck Parking Management
09:10 Market Dynamics and Future of Truck Parking
16:18 Expanding Rig Hut's Reach and Capabilities
27:55 Conclusion and Call to Action

Keeping it Safety Dawg Simple!
#trucksafety #truckinsurance #truckpodcast

Do you need a "Truck Driver Safety Policy?" Get it today! https://safetydawg.com/policy

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

This week on the show, we are talking about a billion, yes, with a B, a billion dollar problem. Truck parking. That's coming up next. Let's go. Welcome to the Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast. And Jake, welcome to the show. Can you take just a second or two and introduce yourself to our viewers?

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Yeah. Thank you guys for, for having me just real quick overview. My name is Jake Gusso. I am the co founder of rig hut truck parking technology. We focus on the industrial parking space. So we provide tools primarily to landlords to help them optimize. their existing facilities, get a handle on inventory, access control, and promotes the professional management of a truck parking facilities.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

All right. So that's rig hut, and we're going to have a link in the show notes down below for that. Why would I need a service like rig hut? Isn't parking, I'll say it lately, isn't it readily available?

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

No, no, no. Park parking is, is a tremendous problem. I mean, I think every, everybody knows that. Who knows what the actual, you know, dollar value or quantity of shortages. The 11 drivers per legal parking space throughout the country. That's an old stat. In our anecdotal experience, it's way worse in, you know, major coastal MSAs, right? South Florida, you know, North Jersey, Southern California, it's probably worse. And then some areas in the middle of the country, you know, it's probably not as bad. But overall, there's a tremendous shortage. Uh, in my humble opinion, that problem is going to be solved by the private sector. So root of the problem is we need more supply. Uh, it's gotta get built. We gotta convert, you know, facilities that are available for truck parking. We gotta open them up. Throughout the country.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Has anybody put a dollar value to this problem?

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Again, dollar value that gets thrown around is about 200 billion dollars. Uh, tough to, you know, If you try to do your own math, you can't arrive there, but you're making a lot of assumptions. And I always just say it's a giant problem that impacts basically everybody in the country. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Uh, and John and I are both in the safety world of trucking, and I certainly see an impact, um, when drivers are using personal conveyance on their ELD system, as they are looking for parking spots. And, uh, Quite often separate topic. We won't get into this. They use PC incorrectly on their ELD, but It starts off frequently as a journey looking for a place to park How how does big rig? Sorry big rig. How does big cut? H u t Helps solve the problem

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Yeah, so rig hot. I'll tell you a little bit more about me. I've spent my whole career in the real estate business, basically. So I started out in property management, you know, retail stuff. So shopping centers, apartment buildings and office assets, primarily here in South Florida. And that grew into a brokerage career. And then, you know, we started buying distressed assets in the Midwest and operating those. So basically, I've spent the last decade in On the real estate side of the equation, the, the original idea behind rig hut was really a real estate play, right? So we were going to actually solve the supply problem directly. We convinced a couple of local landlords down here in Miami. to let us operate their yards on their behalf. So we were basically a third party management company. You know, our, our thesis was this is going to be a great way to actually get, you know, boots on the ground, see the problem firsthand and try to, to solve those problems from a first person perspective. So As we started scaling the management business, we were looking for a tool that would help us automate inventory, right? So we were keeping track of all this information in a giant Google sheet, you know, 800 parking spaces, you know, manually tracking who's in, who's out, did, did someone pay, did someone not pay, what's their gate code? You know, all this stuff. And obviously it became real tedious. And there wasn't a solution that, that, that was available at the time. So this was, you know, towards the end of the pandemic in early 2021. So we started building out the tool for ourselves. Initially, first thing we built was the ability to just facilitate a transaction. So instead of, you know, me trying to get a guy to sell me or Venmo me, or, you know, bring a check and someone has to physically be in the yard. Right. We were like, Hey, let's move this online. So that was the first thing we built. And then over time, given the experience that we've had managing other types of real estate, we knew what the application was supposed to look like, right? So we kind of just built it for ourselves and then it just took off. Right. We, we started gathering feedback from other landlords and then the software platform kind of took over the management business. So how does rig hut help directly? We are, there's a perceived headache from a lot of landlords, especially the larger institutional ones associated with managed truck parking, right? All else being equal, that landlord is going to prefer a single lease, a single relationship with a company like JV hunt or rider, right? Someone that's got institutional grade credit. They don't necessarily want to be, you know, have the operational burden of 100, 200, 500 different tenants in a single facility. So Righud gives them the ability to have a similar relationship, right? Where we're automating a lot of the manual processes that go into managed truck parking. And we automate the pay flows, which are obviously very important to the landlord. Because these guys are taking a lot of risk and putting up a lot of money. To get these facilities open. So we're making yards more efficient, right? We're reducing labor costs and we're incentivizing Landlords that would otherwise not consider opening these yards to make them available to the the driver and specifically Geared more towards the the owner operator, right? The guy that maybe he's got, you know, one to five trucks, right? Right. That's a lot more that's a lot more limited than than space for a large larger carrier, right? If you're a landlord you're You're, you're basically competing against other landlords to get those large carrier relationships, right? Right. Yeah, right.

John Farquhar:

Well, I was gonna say, and this gives them the ability that I don't need to have my truck parking at the house. I can have it in a central location, you know, create that more of a business atmosphere to say, Yeah, my yard is here. My trucks are here. And, you know, I might have an extra space for equipment and stuff.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Yeah, especially from a security standpoint, right? I always talk about South Florida because it's my backyard, but You are not allowed to park a truck at your house down here, anywhere in Dade County. Um, sometimes you can get away with it if you're in a more, it's tough for me to even call it rural because there's so little land down here, but there's a section of Dade County where you could probably get away with it for, for a short amount of time. But you want to park, you want to park your asset that's, you know, you're living in a place that is secure and right. And that's what we're promoting at RIGHT CUT. We're giving landlords the ability to make these facilities, you know, true, you know, operations. Does that make sense? Sure.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Sure. When I was looking at, uh, the platform, one of the things I noticed is that you've got a pay system and you've got a gate code system. So can I assume that if I didn't make my monthly payment, if that's the way it works? Then my gate code is no longer active.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

So we, we actually no longer work with gate codes. We built a piece of hardware ourselves that integrates direct with the gate operator, right? The actual gate motor, and that allows drivers to open the gate straight from their phone. So there's no more gate code. Right. You don't have to remember the gate code. People also cannot give out the gate code because we're verifying who's at the gate using their mobile phone number. Unless you're giving somebody else your cell phone. Um, only you or your authorized user will be allowed in the facility. Um, yeah, so drivers get the convenience of being able to open the gate from their phone. Landlords get the convenience of not having to go down and swap all their access codes if they have an issue.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

That's, sorry, you just removed in my mind a huge headache. Uh, if I was a landlord.

John Farquhar:

That's intense. Simplified the process. Yeah.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Yeah. Now, what is your main target? Is it, um, long term parking? Like John mentioned, owner operator, for example, needing a place to park. Or is it short term overnight spots?

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

It depends on the market and the facility, right? So most of our customers operate primarily monthly parking facilities with a subset of overnight parking. We do not currently have direct relationships with the travel stops or travel centers. For example, if that's your question, these are what we call, we, we, we differentiate the travel stops from what we call managed parking. So, uh, our ICP is what we call it. Ideal customer profile is a managed parking operator and primarily geared towards, towards monthly. But something I always tell landlords, like we get a lot of Discovery requests, right? Demos of guys that are looking to invest in outdoor storage and managed parking. And they ask a similar question like, Should I operate an overnight facility? Or should I operate, you know, a facility that's more geared towards monthly parking? And my response is always, The market's going to tell you what you should optimize for. So for whatever reason, like we could have, you know, two of our customers, a mile apart from each other on the same street, similar level of amenities, similar levels of access. Right. And for whatever reason, one of them gets a ton of overnight business and one of them gets a ton of monthly business. I can't tell you why, uh, but the market tells you what you should optimize for.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Yeah. Well, it makes sense. And you mentioned the other part of it, I think, Um, amenities, uh, so if I was a monthly truck, um, parking lot, I don't think I need a restaurant and washrooms and some of the other things that overnight facilities would almost demand, I would think.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

That's correct. But again, market specific, right? Unfortunately, I always pick on South Florida, but they're the, the supply demand imbalance is so exacerbated that you could almost, you can basically do whatever you want, right? As long as you have a fence, a gate and a parkable surface, you're going to get overnight traffic simply because that's better than parking on the shoulder or the on or off ramp of a highway. Right. Sure. If you go to like DFW, there's a lot of land out there. Parking rates are not, you know, they're about average. So they're between 150 and 200 a month and somewhere around 17 to 20 a day. There's a lot of land. So over there, operators are competing against each other. So you'll see, you know, overnight parking facilities with Movie theater, driver lounge, free Wi Fi, restaurant, you know, showers, the whole nine. Sure. And, and down the street, you know, if you've just got fence gate lights, the other guy's gonna fill up way faster than you.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Yeah, well, at my age, I'll tell you, I wouldn't be in a long haul truck today without a portable washroom. I can't sleep the whole night anymore. But, uh, well, and that would allow me to use some of the facilities. Or some of the parking spaces that don't have all of the facilities and amenities that, um, you know, a truck stop might have. Right? So, you are looking basically, as I understand it, for people who own land, uh, have a fence facility with a, um, an automated gate of some sort and want to allow truck parking on their facility.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Correct. And it, not all yards have that. Automated gates, right? Some of them just have a manual slide gate with a combo lock on it. And that, that could be fine in some areas. Like we have a customer outside of Nashville that leaves his gate completely open. And when we first met him, I was like, Hey, um, do you have any issues with security or theft here? And he says, never. Gates just wide open all the time.

John Farquhar:

Hm. Hm. Could, could, I was going to say, Could this, could you utilize this parking as well for other vehicles? Uh, recreational vehicles, motorhomes, stuff along that line as well?

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

For sure. So, pretty much in every yard, there's some subset of RVs, boats, um, sometimes cars, right? Yeah. It's, it's primarily you know, industrial parking stuff. It's the semis. Right. You know, but they're, they're, it's the same kind of business, right? So like, if you've got your yard laid out primarily for truck and trailer, right, which the spaces are typically 70 or 75 feet long, but then you've always got like some odd portion of your site where you can't accommodate such a big piece of equipment. So you'll lay out some shorter spaces, some 30 foot spaces, 40 foot spaces. So to the landlord, I mean, it doesn't particularly matter if it's a day cab or a sleeper or an rv It's you know, right occupies the same amount of space

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

as long as they're paying the bill. What?

John Farquhar:

Well, I was going to say it would be great to kind of fill those spots that maybe um unique or obscure type spaces and whatnot that you couldn't put a large tractor trailer in where you could put some smaller vehicles or something. So, but still make some revenue off that space by utilizing it for other vehicle types.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

For sure. I mean, people talk about, if you're looking at truck parking, you're probably looking at RV and boat storage as well. Um, sometimes what, what guys can't really get a handle on is like your maximum parkable density. So it's not just you have a space at 70 by 12 or 75 by 12. You need a drive aisle, right? Cause that, that piece of equipment's got a maneuver and then you've got other spaces and you want to make sure that those guys can get in and out. So if you've got say five acres and say it's perfectly rectangular, you're probably only parking on about half of that, maybe 60 percent of that. And then the rest is all drive aisles. Um, and dead space. So that, you know, drives rates too, because the landlord's paying on five acres, not just the portion where people are parking on it. Right, right. Exactly.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Well, and this is one of the things I think truck owners forget is you're not just paying for that. I don't know what it is. 12 by 75. Um, you're paying for the drive aisles and everything, because that's what the landlord's got to cover as cost.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Yep. Yep. These things have gotten crazy expensive to build. Oh, yeah, as you can imagine. I mean, everything's gotten crazy expensive, crazy expensive to build crazy expensive to ensure.

John Farquhar:

Yep. Yeah. Is there opportunity from the landlord's perspective that maybe somebody owns a, an older piece of property, an industrial facility that has a building on it, but they have a large maybe parking area that can be utilized still and whatnot, or even, um, the ability to transfer some of that building into inside storage?

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

For sure. I haven't seen the conversion to inside storage yet personally. I've heard of some guys that have done it, but yeah, we've got customers and we get prospects all the time that own, for example, abandoned malls, um, or abandoned, you know, old, old, old, I'm talking like a hundred, 120 year old distribution centers that have huge parking areas. And those are being converted to outdoor storage. Cool.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Oh, it makes sense. And it's going to bring in revenue. And I don't think the revenue is small. Um, you know, if you can get a hundred trucks on there, it's certainly going to cut your cost.

John Farquhar:

Well, and it definitely makes some convenience for the, you know, in, in, in, in the larger aspect, the motor carrier. Right. So especially that guy who's got five trucks and I need a place. But I don't need anything fancy. I just need a place that's secure and, you know, I easily accessible. For sure.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

I assume in most of these places, you're allowed to leave your car in your parking spot. Uh, when you pull your, your tractor trailer,

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

yes, that's usually how it works. Come in in the personal vehicle, pick up the truck, park the vehicle where the truck was, and then do the inverse when you're, when you're on the way out. Right.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Cool. Cause these smaller companies, a lot of the guys are pretty independent operators. Um, when you're talking about a five or a 10 truck fleet. Um, they're on the road an awful lot of time, unfortunately. They

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

are. I mean, that's one of the interesting things for me as well. Again, South Florida, an over the road driver is probably still paying for monthly parking, even though he's only here five days out of the month, because he wants to know that he has a space when he gets home and he's not subject to paying, you know, 35 a day at a truck stop. That's, you know, not, you know, As safe as the monthly parking facility might be. So I actually, I think over time, as this business continues to sort of evolve and institutionalize, I think almost everything is going to go to pay based on usage. Um, I think it's better for the landlord. It's probably better for the driver. Cause you get to recycle some of those spaces, right? The over the road driver that's booking monthly parking. He's not there 25 days out of the month Or maybe it's 20 days out of the month, right instead of you know, we can reduce the rate based on usage So instead of paying 35 a day at the truck stop Maybe it's 20 a day and everybody just pays 20 a day or 17 a day based on the time that you are actually in the facility. So you reduce some of that overhead for the owner operator. And if you do the math on the landlord side, as long as you can maintain occupancy, they're actually making more revenue.

John Farquhar:

Yeah. Well, I was going to say you could almost have a, if you had a couple of owner operators, say one truck each and whatnot, but they ran different schedules, they could almost team up and say, Hey, let's, we could better utilize this space. We'll rent it between the two of us. I'm home on Mondays and Tuesdays. You're home on Fridays and Saturdays. Cool. No, you know, we're not going to, we're not going to be at the same time, but we can better utilize that space and split the cost.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Some of them do do that.

John Farquhar:

Yeah. Cool. Cool. They

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

would need a spot though, John, for their personal vehicle to park outside of the truck spot. Right.

John Farquhar:

Well, you better swap keys so you can move my car.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Well, and I mean, some of these cars, uh, I forget what brand it was. Uh, where for a while there, they were advertising digital keys that I could send to Jake a digital key and he can hop into my car now. Wow. That's interesting.

John Farquhar:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I was going to say, one of the other advantages with this program, um, Is particularly for small owner operator fleets and whatnot. The insurance providers are always wondering, where are you parking that truck and trailer? Is it safe? You know, do you have a place other than just parking it in on the street or in a shopping mall down the road or whatnot? Now you can be able to provide True evidence to say, yeah, here's a, here, here's the company I'm working with and they can provide details on the security of the facility and yada, yada, yada.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Yeah, that happens all the time. And in my opinion, Righat makes their lives a lot easier for, for that specific use case, right? Cause you get a PDF copy of your reservation agreement. It lays out the level of amenities at the facility. It lays out, you know, you've got a dedicated parking space. And so instead of, you know, having to go back and forth and finding the. The DocuSign that you executed, you know, three months ago that you're never going to look at again. Right. Makes your life a little bit easier.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

No

John Farquhar:

doubt.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

I love it. Sorry. I just had to move you out of the way, Jake. So I could show your co founder there on the, uh, the website. Um, but I cut your head off doing it, but you know, Hey, Jose needs a equal billing, I think. Yes, he does. Hey, if he's a co founder, damn, he should be here too. You know, yeah,

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

a hundred percent

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Just out of curiosity does uh, jose do um, uh interviews

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

He does occasionally, and the way we kind of, so we're, Jose and I are, we've known each other basically our, our entire lives. His brother has been one of my best friends since I was nine or ten years old. So we grew up with each other. Jose's a couple years older than me, but Jose's background is more on the technology side. He's actually built a couple of software companies in the past. That's kind of our, uh, there's really no division of responsibility because we both do everything. Uh, at a startup, but yes, he, he, he does occasionally we should do another one altogether.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

There you go. And how long has rig hut. Uh, been in business

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

2021 was when we, when we said, okay, there's something here. Let's incorporate and sure. And try to make a business out of this. It's evolved over time, right? Management company. Then it was just transaction software. Then we built out the landlord suite of tools and it's still evolving. Right? So we've got a lot of stuff on the roadmap and I'm sure if we talk again a year from now, the business will look similar, but you know, probably. Different as well. Sure.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Sure. I just took your face away from it because I wanted our viewers and listeners to see the map Um that uh, you've got pretty good coverage at the moment Um, and I'm sure it's continuing to grow.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

It is. So that map

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

is outdated.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Believe it or not. Some of our landlords do not want their sites advertised. Oh, that makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. So there's a few different reasons for that. That map is, you know, landlords that elect to have their site listed on the platform, they show up on the pin in terms of our size right now, we just recently crossed over a couple of hundred facilities. So, uh, we are growing and continuing to grow and we're continuing to grow faster, which is always good for us, right? Sometimes small business startup, you always feel like you're, you're moving too slow, but you look back 12 months and you're like, yeah, you know. Um, we did our, we did all right. Sure.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

You said, um, you were well over a hundred facilities. Do you get any idea how many parking spots that is?

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

No, I just got asked this yesterday and I should have done the research before we got on the call, but it's, it's a lot. Yeah. It's, it's in the tens of thousands parking spaces. Cool. The other thing about Recon is. Like if you look at the marketplaces, which serve a different function, right? Those guys are providing visibility, uh, to parking facilities and they're helping drivers find space. That's not what we do. If you look at the marketplaces, there's a lot of facilities on there that might be, you know, two spaces behind, uh, McDonald's or something like that, which is great, right? We should add that to the availability pool, but that guy's not going to get utility out of Rigghead, right? He can get, he probably has it all in his head. He doesn't even need a Google sheet. The yards that Righud has are on the small side. I think our smallest yard has 45 spaces or so. Okay. And on the largest side, our largest single facility has 1, 200 parking spaces. And then we've got a single customer that's got about 3, 400 parking spaces just within his portfolio. So, our stuff is really geared towards the operators that are trying to make a business out of truck parking. Yeah.

John Farquhar:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I was going to say, sorry, that, that, that landlord is also going to have that, uh, You're looking for the landlord that is also going to be able to maintain the facility, keep it clean, Keep it clean. Clear snow, if that were the case, sweep the yard, whatever be, but you know, 'cause yeah, you don't want it falling apart and, you know, concerns of not so much security, but just, geez, I can't even get around. There's so much garbage laying around here. So, yes. You know.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Now last question, because we're heading up, we gotta wrap this up. Um, on the map, there's not a, you're talking to two Canadians, eh, Jake. Um, there's not a Canadian location now, so my question is. And I, since this is software based, is there any, um, barriers to a Canadian reaching out to ReCut and say, Hey, can we work together?

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Small barrier. So we've gotten a little bit of interest out of Canada, just organically. Uh, we haven't, we haven't focused on Canada directly just because there's, you know, we're still. Again, startup, and there's a lot of opportunity in the States. I know it's a big problem in Canada as well, and we've gotten some interest. The only barrier is we've got to set up a new subsidiary and a new payments, you know, a merchant, right? Merchant ID. Um, then there's some additional complications on like payouts, right? So our payouts process is super dialed in and refined in the States. What we use for our current, you know, processing stack doesn't allow for the same functionality in Canada. So there's some barriers, but it's not, you know, a huge deal. I expect, you know, we'll, we'll be able to help in Canada as well shortly.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

Yeah, because about 40 percent of our viewership is Canadian, just so you know. Awesome. You're still talking mostly to Americans, but there is a significant portion that is Canadian. Yep. Cool. So if you were a landlord, uh, and you have available truck parking of what 50 or more is what you would ideally like, Jake, would that, I'd say if you've got,

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

if you've got, you know, two acres or more,

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

okay,

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

okay, cool. If you've

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

got two acres or more and you want to turn it into a sleek operation. You should reach out to Rig Hut. Anyway, thank you, Jake, so much for coming on to the show this week.

Jake Guso, Rig Hut:

Yes, great information. Thank you guys for having me. It was a fun one. Thank you.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg 1:

And Jake, thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate it, and I would ask you to hit that like button. It really helps us know that one, you're getting value and two, it spreads the word to other people. So please hit that like button. It's right there. We, John and I, would appreciate it very much. All right, that's it for this week. See you next week.

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