The week
What is National Truck Driver Appreciation Week?
The American Trucking Associations has run it every September since 1988. The 2026 week is the 38th, Sunday 13 through Saturday 19 September. It exists because the numbers behind it are easy to forget between Septembers.
Eight in ten communities have no rail spur, no port and no pipeline. Everything on the shelf arrived on a truck, driven by a person who was somewhere else the night before. The week is for that person.
What the job asks
What does a driver give up that the rest of us never see?
The theme names miles and sacrifices. The miles are on the odometer. The sacrifices are quieter, and most of them happen at the end of the day, after the freight is no longer anyone else's concern.
- The clockThe 14-hour window does not pause for anything, including the search for somewhere legal to stop. 98% of drivers say finding safe parking is a struggle and 70% have run past their hours doing it, per the ATA. The parking-clock post walks through what that hour costs.
- The bedFor most of the week the sleeper is home. When the search fails it is parked on a ramp or a shoulder, next to a load somebody would like to steal, with the driver asleep inside. A study counted 2.2 million ramp-parking events a year. Each one is a person sleeping somewhere they would rather not.
- The marginFor an owner-operator the truck is the business, the bank and the retirement plan in one object. A blowout takes the day; a theft claim revisits where the truck slept. Nobody else at the shipper or the receiver carries that risk home.
- The distanceBirthdays by phone, a few nights a month in a real bed, and the weather of whichever state the load is in. On the Gulf Coast that means hurricane season, which is now. None of this appears on a bill of lading.
Why the yard is built this way
Why does LockRig care so much about safe, secure truck parking?
Because we know what the truck is. It is a driver's livelihood, the week's bed and the reason every shelf in the country is stocked. Appreciating drivers, in practice, means appreciating their vehicles: the truck comes to no harm, and the driver gets a night's rest. Everything on this property follows from that.
- A gate that opens at any hourIndividual access credentials, 24/7. Confirmed round-the-clock access is rarer than listings suggest; the post on what "secure" actually means has the survey figure. Here the gate works at 4 a.m. because that is when drivers arrive.
- Lit end to end, watched all nightLED lighting across every stall and cameras on the property, so a driver walking back from the cab is on camera and in the light, and a trailer left for the weekend is where it was left. The security page lists each layer.
- Someone who lives hereA resident manager on the property, not a number that rings an answering service. When something looks wrong at 2 a.m., a person walks out and looks.
- Stalls built for the truck, and the next problem handled inside the fenceGravel stalls sized for a tractor and a 53-foot trailer with room to turn without a spotter, and a tire shop operating on the property, so a flat found at the stall does not become a road call.
- A rate that is publishedEvery stall and every rate is on the site, so nobody negotiates at the gate at the end of a 14-hour day. The number a driver sees is the number a driver pays.
This week
What appreciation looks like from this yard
The most useful thank-you a parking yard can offer is the same one it offers every other week of the year: the gate opens, the lights are on, the manager is home, and the truck is exactly where it was left in the morning. That is the job, and this week is a good time to say why we do it.
To the drivers who park here, thank you for trusting us with the truck. To the ones passing through on I-10 who have never pulled in, the entrance is signed from the road at 3485 FM 362 in Brookshire, five minutes north of exit 732. And to all 3.6 million of you: the country runs on your miles. Thank you for every one of them.
Five or more trucks? A fleet account keeps every driver's stall on one invoice.
At a glance
Where is secure truck parking near Katy, off I-10?
LockRig Storage & Parking is a gated, lit, resident-managed truck parking yard at 3485 FM 362, Brookshire, TX 77423, five minutes north of I-10 exit 732, west of Katy and Houston. It offers overnight truck parking and monthly truck parking for semi-trucks, tractor-trailers, bobtails, box trucks and cargo vans, with 24/7 gate access, published rates, a tire shop operating on the property, and 8×20 drive-up storage vaults on the same site. Availability changes daily; the booking page is the accurate source for what is open tonight.
Find the yard
Five minutes north of I-10, exit 732
3485 FM 362, Brookshire, TX 77423 — tap the map and Google Maps takes you straight to the gate.
The entrance is signed from the road — no hunting an unmarked driveway in the dark.
A safe place to stop, this week and every week
A gated, lit, resident-managed yard five minutes off I-10 at Brookshire, built so the truck comes to no harm and the driver gets a night's rest.
