Truck Stop Feasibility Studies: The Hours-of-Service Clock, Parking Capacity, and the Interchange Trap

A truck stop feasibility study answers a question that sounds simple and is not: how many trucks will stop here, for how long, and what will they buy while they are stopped.

The first part of that question is where most studies begin and end. Traffic counts are public, truck percentages are published, and a capture rate applied to an AADT figure produces a number that looks like analysis. The trouble is that traffic counts measure throughput, and the profit in this asset class comes from dwell. A truck passing at 2pm with six hours of legal driving left buys diesel at a few cents a gallon of margin and leaves. The same truck passing the same point at 8pm, out of clock, parks overnight, showers, eats, buys inside, and generates several times the gross profit.

Which trucks are out of clock at your exit is not a function of how many trucks pass it. It is a function of federal regulation and of where the freight started.

That is the organising insight of this article, and it has a practical consequence: two sites with identical truck AADT can have entirely different overnight demand, and therefore entirely different non-fuel economics. A feasibility study that stops at traffic counts has measured the half of the business that generates the minority of the profit.

This article sets out the feasibility half of a travel centre assignment. How the corridor trade area is drawn and why direction matters as much as volume. How the hours-of-service clock writes the demand map. Why parking capacity is a revenue constraint rather than a site amenity, and how to price that constraint. How the revenue build works department by department. Which cost line quietly inverts when diesel prices rise. How coverage is tested, and which programme the credit routes to.

It then carries the appraisal analysis as the supporting half.

What the study has to prove

How many trucks stop, and for how long. Separating fuel-only stops from dwell stops, because they are different customers with different economics even when they are the same driver on a different day.

Whether the site can physically hold the dwell demand it attracts. Parking capacity caps inside sales directly. A site with more overnight demand than spaces is turning away its highest-margin customers every night.

Whether the departmental revenue build holds. Fuel in gallons at cents per gallon, store at capture rate and ticket, food as its own business, services at their own margins. Never in aggregate.

Whether coverage survives the cost lines that scale unexpectedly. Card interchange, which scales with fuel dollars rather than gallons. Pavement, which is measured in acres. Tanks, which have a regulatory clock.

The finding that writes the demand map: the hours-of-service clock

Federal hours-of-service rules for property carriers set an 11-hour driving limit within a 14-hour on-duty window, following 10 consecutive hours off duty, with a 30-minute break required after 8 cumulative hours of driving.

Those numbers are uniform, federal, and enforced electronically. And they mean a driver's day ends at a distance rather than at a time.

At realistic average speeds including the mandatory break, congestion and access time, a full legal driving day covers roughly 450 to 600 miles. So overnight parking demand does not spread evenly along a corridor. It clusters in a band at that distance out from major freight generators, and again at multiples of it for multi-day runs. Between the bands, trucks are moving with clock in hand and stop only to fuel. Inside the bands, they are looking for a space.

The practical form of this for a feasibility study:

*Illustrative. The distance band must be built from the actual freight generators feeding the corridor.*

Identical counts. Different businesses. Site A is a fuel stop with a store attached. Site B is a travel centre. A study that reported both as "8,400 trucks per day at the interchange" would have told the lender nothing that distinguishes them.

How to build it. Identify the major freight generators feeding the corridor: ports, intermodal terminals, large distribution clusters, manufacturing concentrations. Use the Freight Analysis Framework for origin-destination flows. Measure the driving distance from each to the subject, and establish where the subject sits in the band. Then validate against observable evidence: overnight occupancy at competing centres, whether trucks are parking on ramps and shoulders nearby, and reservation platform availability at the exit on a weeknight.

Direction is half the demand

Freight is directionally imbalanced. A corridor carries loaded volume one way and a lighter or emptier return the other, and the imbalance can be substantial. A travel centre sits on one side of the highway.

So the demand denominator is not segment AADT. It is peak-direction truck AADT on the subject's side, and a site placed on the wrong side of a directionally imbalanced corridor carries a structural capture ceiling that no operational excellence overcomes.

Access geometry compounds it. A 70-foot combination needs turning radius, throat depth, approach grade and a clean exit back to the ramp. Where entering or leaving requires an awkward manoeuvre, drivers self-select away, and they do so permanently because routing decisions are habitual.

Market and demand analysis

The trade area is a corridor segment

Not a drive-time ring. The catchment is a length of highway in one direction of travel, bounded upstream and downstream by the nearest competing centre. Define it by:

• Peak-direction truck AADT at the segment
• Distance and brand of the nearest competing centres upstream and downstream
• Interchange configuration and access geometry for full-length combinations
• The subject's position in the hours-of-service band

Data sources, all public: FHWA Highway Performance Monitoring System for segment AADT and truck percentage, the Freight Analysis Framework for origin-destination freight flows, and state DOT count programmes for station-level directional and vehicle-class data. Commercial truck GPS datasets, including the one underlying much of the sector's parking research, refine actual flow and stopping behaviour.

Building demand from the ground up

At an average diesel fill of 125 gallons, 151 fuelling trucks produce roughly 18,900 diesel gallons per day. Passenger-side gasoline demand is built separately off non-truck AADT with its own capture, fill size and inside-sales basket.

Capture rates are brand-, price- and network-dependent and must be evidenced rather than assumed. A site accepting the major fleet cards and carrying a network banner captures at a different rate from an independent, and the difference is larger than signage or price.

Parking capacity is a revenue constraint, and it can be priced

The national shortage is documented. The statutory survey puts total capacity at roughly 313,000 spaces, about 40,000 public and 273,000 private, against a national imbalance on the order of one space per eleven trucks.

For a specific site, the shortage is not a statistic. It is an arithmetic constraint on inside sales, and it should be computed:

*Illustrative, and the per-turn-away basket must be built from the subject's own average tickets.*

At a blended margin across those categories, that is several hundred thousand dollars of gross profit the site cannot capture because it has nowhere to put the customer. Set against the land and paving cost of adding spaces, that produces a capital decision with a return attached, which is a far more useful output than an observation that parking is tight.

It also explains why parking capacity behaves like a permitted entitlement rather than a site improvement. New truck parking is difficult to entitle, land-hungry, and reliably opposed locally. A site with a large permitted lot holds something a competitor cannot readily build.

Competitive supply, and who is actually in the set

The majors: Pilot Company, now wholly owned by Berkshire Hathaway; Love's Travel Stops, private and expanding steadily; and TravelCenters of America and Petro, acquired by BP in 2023. Adjacent formats include QuikTrip, Casey's, Maverik, Sheetz, Wawa and Kwik Trip.

One competitive-set discipline worth stating because it is routinely got wrong: Buc-ee's does not serve tractor-trailers. It is a passenger-vehicle destination with no truck fuelling or truck parking. A Buc-ee's at the same interchange competes for gasoline and passenger inside sales and is essentially irrelevant to the truck side of a travel centre's business. Counting it as competition misstates the analysis in one direction; ignoring its effect on the passenger side misstates it in the other.

Public truck parking is generally a complement, not a competitor. Federally funded parking capacity, built under infrastructure programmes and discretionary grants, is typically amenity-only: spaces, lighting, sometimes restrooms, no fuel, food or showers. Public capacity relieves the shortage that constrains a private centre's inside sales rather than taking its customers, and where a public facility is planned nearby it is worth analysing as a change in the local parking balance rather than as new competition.

The pipeline, and the constraint that is coming

New travel centre entitlement is slow and contested. Traffic, lighting, idling, wastewater and general local resistance make the approval a multi-year exercise in many jurisdictions, which is the same dynamic that protects existing capacity in marinas and golf.

The forward-looking constraint is electrical. Megawatt-scale charging for Class 8 trucks requires grid service that most sites cannot obtain quickly, and interconnection queues for very large loads run into years in constrained regions. If that pattern holds, an early, permitted, high-capacity electrical service becomes a scarce entitlement in its own right, and queue position may eventually be worth more than the canopy.

This is forward-looking rather than settled, and it should be framed that way in any study. But it belongs in a feasibility analysis today for a practical reason: the cost of upgrading electrical service is a capital item that a site adding charging will face, and the time to get it is an entitlement risk.

The revenue build

Departmentally, always. The existing appraisal analysis on this site establishes why: fuel is roughly 60% of revenue and a minority of profit, while non-fuel is roughly 40% of revenue and around 60% of profit. A single blended line conceals the entire structure of the business.

Diesel. Gallons per day multiplied by cents per gallon. Retail diesel margin is volatile and tends to move inversely with fuel price, widening when costs fall and compressing when they rise.

Gasoline. Separately, because the customer, fill size and margin structure differ.

Diesel exhaust fluid. Modest volume, healthy margin, and it scales with the fleet's emissions-equipped share.

Convenience store. Inside-sales capture as a percentage of fuelling and parking customers, multiplied by average ticket, at margin by category. The benchmark source is the NACS State of the Industry Report, published annually and paywalled to members and purchasers. Capture rate is the number a competent study derives from actual performance and a generic one assumes.

Foodservice. Whether a franchised quick service brand, a proprietary restaurant, or both, modelled as its own department with its own margin and labour. Where a franchise operates, the Item 19 financial performance representation in the current franchise disclosure document is the evidence base, and the remaining agreement term and any remodel obligation belong in the capital plan rather than being discovered in year three.

Showers. Priced per use, with utilisation tied directly to overnight parking count. No parking, no showers. This is the clearest illustration of why the parking constraint is a revenue constraint.

Truck service, tyre and repair. Revenue at gross margin, but the binding constraint is technicians, not demand. A projection that grows service revenue without adding qualified labour has projected an outcome without its cause, and technician scarcity is real in most markets.

Scales, truck wash and laundry. Ancillary, dwell-dependent, and useful traffic drivers in their own right.

Gaming, where permitted, and it can be large. Video gaming terminals at qualifying truck stops are a material profit line in a small number of states. Illinois is the most significant: a qualifying truck stop establishment may operate up to ten terminals, with the qualifying definition set by statute and administered by the state gaming board, and per-terminal income that can rival a department of the core business. Louisiana, Montana, Nevada and West Virginia have their own regimes.

This line deserves specific attention in a feasibility study because it is entirely dependent on state law and on the site meeting a statutory definition. A projection carrying gaming revenue must confirm the site qualifies, and a study for a site in a state without a regime should not carry it at all.

Reserved and paid parking. Operators set aside a portion of the lot, commonly somewhere between five and fifty spaces, bookable in advance by app or paid on arrival, at fees ranging from about $5 to $20 or more per overnight. Model it with its own occupancy and rate assumptions rather than as a percentage uplift. The reservation platforms themselves are a useful utilisation data source for the exit.

Fleet fuelling and network economics. Acceptance of the major fleet cards, and membership of a network, materially raises volume for an independent site at the cost of thinner margin. The trade is real and it should be modelled both ways rather than assumed.

Ramp and absorption

A newly built travel centre ramps over multiple years as fleet agreements, loyalty enrolment and driver routing habit build. Habit is the operative word: routing decisions are sticky, and a new site is asking drivers to change a pattern rather than to make a fresh choice.

Independents ramp more slowly than network banners, because the network supplies card acceptance, routing visibility and fleet relationships from day one. Model the difference rather than applying a generic curve.

Cost structure: the lines operators understate

The interchange trap, which inverts the usual assumption

Credit card interchange is charged on the dollar value of the sale, not on gallons. Fuel is the largest dollar line in the business. So interchange cost rises with the price of diesel even when volume is completely flat.

Worked, at an interchange cost of roughly 2.2% of fuel sales and a retail margin of 18 cents per gallon:

*Illustrative. Interchange rate and margin must be calibrated to the subject.*

A 44% increase in fuel price cuts net fuel margin per gallon by roughly a third, with no change in volume and no change in gross margin. Revenue rises, reported sales look excellent, and profit falls.

The consequence for a feasibility study is that a rising fuel price is a downside sensitivity, not an upside one, and a projection that grows revenue with fuel prices while holding operating expenses at a fixed percentage has the sign wrong on its largest controllable cost.

The rest of the cost structure

Labour. A full-service travel centre runs continuously across fuel desk, store, foodservice, showers and service bays. Headcount is large, wage pressure is real, and the service department is constrained by a scarce trade.

Pavement. Several acres of heavy-vehicle-rated surface under repeated axle loading. Resurfacing is a recurring capital obligation measured in hundreds of thousands, not a maintenance item, and it is the most commonly under-reserved line in the asset class.

Underground storage tanks. Federal leak detection and compliance obligations apply to all underground fuel storage. Tank and line replacement has a defined service life and a large cost; state trust funds provide partial coverage with deductibles and caps; and a release can run well into six or seven figures and stall financing entirely while it is being closed out. Tank age, construction and compliance history are underwriting facts, not property description.

Stormwater. Permitting and treatment across the paved acreage, a regulated obligation with its own infrastructure and its own maintenance.

Utilities. Large, lit, continuously operating site, plus the electrical service upgrade cost if charging is added.

Shrink and foodservice waste.

Franchise fees and remodel obligations, which arrive on the franchisor's cycle rather than the owner's.

Property tax reassessment on sale, and insurance, which carries fuel and environmental exposure.

Replacement reserves

Coverage and sensitivity

The two definitions

Under conventional and SBA practice, coverage is EBITDA over total debt service, with SBA underwriting centred on a minimum of 1.15 times.

Under USDA's rule at 7 CFR Part 5001, replacement capital expenditure is deducted from EBITDA before the ratio is taken.

Sensitivities that mean something for a travel centre

Fuel price rising. Counterintuitive and specific to this asset class, for the interchange reason above. Run the price up, not down, and watch net fuel margin compress.

Fuel margin compression independently of price, since retail diesel margin is volatile.

Parking capacity binding. Model the turn-away arithmetic at peak season rather than on an annual average, because the nights that matter are the nights the lot is full.

Loss of a fleet fuelling agreement. A volume cliff rather than a gradient. If the projection depends on a network relationship, test its absence.

Competitive entry at the same interchange. A major network opening across the ramp is a step change, not a trend, and the pipeline check should be specific to the interchange rather than the county.

Tank release. Not a percentage. A defined event with a defined remediation cost and a financing consequence.

Franchise remodel obligation landing inside the hold period.

Break-even, stated in gallons and trucks

The most useful single output: the site covers at 1.00 times at 14,200 diesel gallons per day and 118 fuelling trucks, and at 1.15 times at 16,400 gallons and 136 trucks, holding inside-sales capture constant.

Then state the second version, holding gallons constant and flexing capture, because that is the lever management actually controls.

Programme routing

SBA 7(a). Available for these special-purpose properties up to $5 million, with a minimum equity injection around 15%, real estate terms to 25 years, and mid-2026 pricing broadly in the 9% to 11.5% range on variable structures. Fuel properties and travel centres sit on the special purpose list, which raises the equity requirement and, on ground-up construction or change of ownership, commonly triggers a third-party feasibility study.

SBA 504. For ground-up construction and major expansion, funding long-lived fixed assets. Fuel systems, canopies and pavement are the kind of long-lived improvement the debenture structure suits, though eligibility of specific components should be confirmed. It does not fund working capital or fuel inventory, which for a travel centre is a substantial separate requirement.

USDA Business and Industry under 7 CFR Part 5001. Frequently overlooked and frequently available, because interchange locations are disproportionately rural and many sit comfortably under the population threshold. Loan sizes exceed 7(a). An independent feasibility study is required for new businesses. The stricter coverage definition applies.

Conventional and specialty fuel retail lending. An active specialty market exists for fuel and convenience assets, with lenders who understand tank risk and departmental income. Terms are tighter on environmental condition than on credit.

Environmental conditions precedent. Phase I assessment is effectively mandatory on any fuel site, with Phase II where indicated. Lender policy is generally hostile to single-wall tanks, and a known, un-remediated release can make a site unfinanceable until it is closed out with regulatory sign-off. This is not a diligence detail; it is a gate.

When a third-party feasibility study is required

• Ground-up construction or a start-up operation
• Change of ownership on a special purpose property
• Material change in operating model, such as adding foodservice, service bays or gaming
• Projections not supported by historical operations
• The lender's own credit policy

Independence is the operative test. A study prepared by a party with an interest in the transaction closing is not a third-party study.

Where truck stop projects fail

Built on the wrong side of a directionally imbalanced corridor. A permanent capture ceiling, discovered after construction.

Access geometry a full-length combination cannot use comfortably. Drivers self-select away and do not come back.

Insufficient parking capping inside sales. The site attracts dwell demand it cannot hold, and the highest-margin customers go to the next exit.

The fuel price rises and profit falls. Interchange on dollars, as above, in a projection that treated fuel price as neutral or positive.

Fuel margin compression in a model built on a favourable margin year.

A tank release. Remediation cost, regulatory process, and a financing freeze at the same time.

Franchise remodel obligation arriving in a year with no capital headroom.

Loss of a fleet fuelling agreement, taking volume with it.

A major network opening at the same interchange, which is a step change the pipeline check should have caught.

Service revenue projected without technicians to deliver it.

Gaming revenue projected in a site or state that does not qualify, which is a straightforward and avoidable error.

Alternative use never examined, which is where the appraisal takes over, because on some sites the highest-value answer is not a travel centre at all.

What the appraisal will test

The feasibility study establishes whether the operation covers. The appraisal establishes what the asset is worth, and in this asset class the two diverge on one point in particular: the appraisal has to take seriously the possibility that the best use of the land is not a truck stop.

The inversion that governs the analysis

The industry-level split is consistent and it should shape every truck stop income model.

Fuel is approximately 60% of total revenue. It is high volume, low margin, and its principal function is generating traffic.

Non-fuel, meaning convenience store, foodservice, showers, repair, tyre and other services, is approximately 40% of gross revenue and approximately 60% of profit.

Which means fuel is the customer acquisition channel and the inside sale is the business. A site that pumps large volumes but converts poorly to inside sales is running the low-margin half without the high-margin half attached.

For the appraiser this is a departmental modelling requirement rather than a stylistic preference. Fuel gallons at a cents-per-gallon margin, store sales at a gross margin percentage, foodservice at its own, services at theirs. A single revenue line capitalised at one rate misprices the asset in both directions: it flatters a fuel-heavy site and penalises a food-and-service-heavy one.

Capture rate is the variable connecting the two: what proportion of fuelling customers buy inside, and at what average ticket. That is the number a competent appraisal establishes and a generic one assumes.

Parking: from amenity to asset

Truck parking has historically been free, on the assumption that drivers buying fuel or food should park at no charge. That model is under pressure from both ends.

Demand is severe. Roughly 98% of drivers report difficulty finding safe parking after 10 p.m., and the trucking industry is estimated to lose around $4.4 billion annually to parking inefficiencies: hours spent searching, and hours of service consumed doing so.

Supply is expensive to provide. Maintaining a large paved lot carries permitting, environmental drainage, paving and frequent repaving costs. A truck stop must manage stormwater runoff across a minimum of roughly five acres of pavement, which is a regulated obligation rather than a maintenance preference.

So operators have begun charging. Reserved parking programmes typically set aside a portion of the lot, commonly somewhere between five and fifty spaces, bookable in advance by app or paid on arrival, at fees ranging from about $5 to $20 or more per overnight.

Three appraisal implications follow. Parking is becoming an income line rather than a cost centre, and where a reservation programme operates, that revenue should be modelled with its own occupancy and rate assumptions. Parking capacity is a scarce and hard-to-replicate asset, since new truck parking is difficult to entitle, the land requirement is substantial, and communities frequently resist it. And a site with inadequate parking is constrained regardless of its other attributes, because parking capacity governs how many drivers can stop long enough to buy anything.

The land, and what else it could be

Truck stop sites share a specific profile: large acreage, interstate or major highway access, heavy paving, and, critically, zoning that permits outdoor storage and industrial-style use rather than retail alone.

That combination has genuine alternative-use value. Investors active in this space explicitly seek sites near major metropolitan areas with flexible industrial and outdoor storage zoning, and are willing to look at older or underused facilities on that basis.

The highest and best use analysis therefore has a real alternative to test. Truck terminals, container and equipment yards, trailer storage, contractor yards and last-mile logistics uses all want the same characteristics: acreage, paving, heavy vehicle access, tolerant zoning.

In markets where industrial land has appreciated substantially, a marginal truck stop may be worth more as an outdoor storage site than as an operating travel centre. That is a conclusion requiring evidence, but it is a live question rather than a theoretical one, and it should be addressed rather than assumed away.

The corollary is that the improvements are the specialised part and the land is not. Canopies, dispensers, tanks and wash bays are use-specific. The paved acreage is not.

Fuel supply and branding

The fuel supply arrangement is a contract that materially affects value and it is frequently underexamined.

Branded sites operate under a supply agreement with terms covering volume commitments, pricing mechanism, image and equipment standards, remaining term, and assignability on sale. A brand delivers credibility and, at some sites, credit card network economics, but it also constrains pricing and imposes capital obligations.

Unbranded sites buy on the rack or through a jobber, with pricing flexibility and no image obligation, but without brand draw.

For appraisal purposes, the remaining term and assignability of a supply agreement is a diligence item on the same footing as a lease. A site whose supply agreement expires shortly, or which requires supplier consent to transfer, carries a risk the income model should reflect.

Debranding and rebranding costs are real capital events, covering signage, canopy, dispenser image and sometimes tank work, and where an agreement is near expiry, the cost of whichever path the buyer takes belongs in the analysis.

Environmental

Underground storage tanks are the defining environmental exposure and they carry specific regulatory obligations, including federally required leak detection systems on all underground fuel storage tanks.

Tank age, construction and compliance history belong in the property description. Single-wall tanks, tanks approaching the end of their service life, and any history of releases materially affect both value and financeability.

Stormwater management across the required pavement acreage is an ongoing regulated obligation with its own infrastructure.

Phase I environmental assessment is effectively mandatory on any fuel site, with Phase II where indicated, and a lender will not proceed without it. An appraisal delivered without reference to the environmental status of a fuel property is incomplete.

Capitalisation rates and the multiple spread

Fuel and convenience assets have been pricing in a relatively tight band, with geography driving much of the variation.

National indications run around 5.6%, with a meaningful distinction between valuations including fuel income, around 5.58%, and those excluding it, around 6.87%. That spread is itself informative: fuel income is priced as lower risk when it is included at all.

By market: Florida has been tightest at roughly 5.11%, Texas around 5.63%, the Carolinas approximately 5.0% to 5.5%, Tennessee 5.4% to 5.75%, with weaker markets at 6.0% to 6.5% or higher. Corporate-backed branded convenience tenants compress further, into the 4.83% to 5.65% range.

The multiple structure makes the allocation question concrete, and it is worth stating because it shows what the real estate contributes:

• Business-only transactions: approximately 2.5x to 4.0x EBITDA
• Combined business and property: approximately 4.0x to 7.0x EBITDA
• Real-estate-inclusive sales: around 8x EBITDA, reaching 7x to 9x in premium markets

The gap between a business-only multiple and a real-estate-inclusive one is the real estate. For an appraiser performing a going-concern allocation, that observed market spread is useful evidence rather than a theoretical construct.

Independent single-site travel centres have commonly transacted in a range of roughly $3.5 million to $6.5 million, with transaction volume low relative to other automotive-related property but with good assets moving quickly, at median marketing periods under a hundred days.

Where these appraisals go wrong

• Revenue modelled in aggregate, so the profit inversion between fuel and non-fuel disappears.
• Capture rate assumed rather than derived from actual inside-sales performance.
• Parking treated as site improvement rather than as capacity with scarcity value and, increasingly, its own revenue line.
• Alternative use unexamined on sites where industrial or outdoor storage zoning permits it.
• Fuel supply agreement term and assignability not addressed.
• Tank age and compliance status omitted.
• Repaving reserve absent. Several acres of pavement under heavy vehicle loading is a recurring capital obligation, not a maintenance item.
• Foodservice franchise obligations ignored, including remodel requirements.
• Going-concern value reported without allocation where the assignment requires separate real property, equipment and business figures.

What a lender is reading for

On the feasibility side

• Is the trade area defined as a directional corridor segment rather than a radius?
• Is the demand denominator peak-direction truck AADT on the subject's side of the highway?
• Does the analysis establish where the site sits on the hours-of-service clock relative to the freight generators feeding the corridor?
• Is overnight parking demand estimated separately from fuel demand, and is the turn-away cost quantified where capacity binds?
• Is revenue modelled departmentally, with capture rate evidenced rather than assumed?
• Is gaming revenue, where carried, supported by the site actually meeting the statutory definition?
• Does the sensitivity set treat a rising fuel price as a downside because of interchange?
• Is there a pavement and tank reserve built from components?
• Is coverage tested under the definition that applies to the programme?
• Is break-even stated in gallons per day and trucks per day?

On the appraisal side

• Is the income modelled departmentally, with fuel and non-fuel separated?
• What is the capture rate, and what supports it?
• How many truck spaces, and is any of that capacity monetised?
• What does the zoning permit besides a travel centre? Because that determines the downside.
• What is the fuel supply arrangement, and does it transfer?
• What is the tank status, and has environmental work been completed?
• Is the allocation complete, and does it reconcile to the market spread between business-only and real-estate-inclusive pricing?

Truck stops are among the few property types where the physical asset the market increasingly values, meaning several acres of paved, well-located, heavy-vehicle-tolerant land with parking capacity, is the part an appraisal is most likely to treat as background. Freight volumes are rising, rest requirements are mandated, and the parking shortfall is documented and worsening. The site is doing more work than the canopy, and the analysis should reflect that.

The feasibility discipline points the same way. The traffic count is the easiest number to obtain and the least informative one in the study. What decides the deal is how many of those trucks are out of clock when they reach the exit, whether the lot can hold them, and what happens to the margin when diesel goes up.

For the cross-asset framework, demand regimes, valuation methods and reviewer tests, see the 2026 Feasibility Methodology Atlas.

Frequently asked questions

Does an SBA loan for a truck stop require a feasibility study?

Often. Fuel properties and travel centres sit on SBA's special purpose property list, which raises the equity injection and makes a third-party study likely on ground-up construction, on change of ownership, on a material change in operating model, or where projections are not supported by historical operations. The lender's own credit policy can require one independently.

How is truck stop demand calculated?

From a directional corridor segment rather than a drive-time ring. Peak-direction truck AADT on the subject's side of the highway, times an evidenced capture rate, gives fuelling trucks per day and gallons. Overnight dwell demand is estimated separately, because it is driven by where the site sits on the hours-of-service clock rather than by traffic volume.

Why do two truck stops with the same traffic count perform differently?

Because traffic counts measure throughput and the profit comes from dwell. Federal hours-of-service rules end a driver's day at a distance of roughly 450 to 600 miles, so overnight demand clusters in bands out from major freight generators. A site inside the band fills its lot and sells showers, food and inside merchandise. A site outside it sells diesel to trucks that keep moving.

How much revenue does inadequate truck parking cost?

It can be quantified. Multiply nightly turn-aways by the average basket a dwelling driver spends on shower, food and store, then annualise. On a site turning away ninety trucks a night, the figure runs past a million dollars of gross revenue, which converts the parking question from an observation into a capital decision with a return attached.

Does a higher diesel price help or hurt a truck stop?

Usually hurts. Card interchange is charged on the dollar value of the sale rather than per gallon, so interchange cost per gallon rises with the price of fuel while gross margin per gallon does not. Revenue goes up and profit goes down. A rising fuel price belongs in the downside sensitivity set, not the upside.

Can a truck stop be financed through USDA?

Frequently, and it is overlooked. Interchange locations are disproportionately rural and many sit under the Business and Industry rural population threshold, with loan sizes above what 7(a) allows. The trade is that the USDA coverage definition deducts replacement capital expenditure before the ratio is taken, and pavement and tanks make that deduction large.

*Prepared by UnionMetric Appraisal & Feasibility. Capitalisation rates, multiples, transaction ranges and financing terms reflect published sources at the date of writing and vary by market; they are planning references rather than substitutes for property-specific analysis. Environmental, zoning and fuel supply matters are site-specific and require appropriate professional review. Last updated: 2026-07-31.*

*Feasibility methodology, demand arithmetic, reserve component schedules and worked examples in this article are illustrative planning frameworks and require calibration to the subject corridor and site. Gaming eligibility, hours of service rules and loan programme parameters change and should be confirmed against the operative regulation and agency guidance at the date of application. Nothing here is legal advice.*