Truck parking lawyer spills all with Rig Hut

February 14th, 2025

Welcome to Rig Hut - Striving to be the pinnacle of industrial commercial parking solutions.

Be a part of a great chat with Ronald Rohde and Jake Guso, CEO of Rig Hut, as we dive into industrial real estate and truck parking management! This conversation touches on the challenges and opportunities within the truck parking industry, providing valuable insights for anyone interested in investing in or managing truck parking facilities.

Thoughts:

• Growth Potential: There's significant potential in markets like South Florida, New Jersey, Inland Empire, and beyond, aka where land constraints and increasing demand for truck parking could lead to higher prices.

• Market Challenges: As regulations become stricter, truck drivers must adapt to paying for proper parking rather than relying on residential streets or informal spaces.

• Customer Service: Emphasizing good customer service, including responsiveness, is a strong competitive advantage in the truck parking space.

Learn More: www.TheRigHut.com

Watch More: https://youtube.com/@righuttruckparking?si=5lVj1DiV-oN8M3Yb

^Transcript:

What's up guys it's Ron from Ronald Rohde Law, and today we're interviewing my good friend one of my best people in the truck parking industry Jake Guso, he runs rig Hut remote software for Truck Parking Management. So Jake welcome to the channel how are you doing? Thank you, Ron, doing great how are you?

Awesome well it's great to have you on here because I think a lot of people who watch this channel are industrial investors they are interested in iOS and everybody loves that buzzword but what you do is really specialized, I mean how would you describe your corner of the iOS World?

Sure, so within iOS you've got different sorts of tranches, right? You've got traditional NetLease outdoor storage assets where you might have a driver or a JB Hunt occupy 100% of your property or a vast majority of your property, we operate in the managed truck parking space where you've got a multi-tenant operation similar to imagine a pedestrian parking garage or a surface lot where you've guys got coming in-and-out in high volumes, so what Rig Hut does is parking management software purposely built for industrial parking applications. We automate the inventory management component so; what spaces are available, and which tenants are parked in which spaces within your facility, we log certificates of insurance and license data. If the landlord chooses to capture that information it goes in a built-in payments billing, and reporting system, and it makes it really easy for someone who deals with the headaches that come with multi-tenant parking operations. That was awesome.

So, if you'd like I can give you a little background as to how Rig Hut came to be if that would be helpful.

Yeah, jump in.

So I've spent the entirety of my career in the real estate business, I started as a property manager when I had just graduated college, kind of grew in that business with a local investor down here in Miami and then I transitioned into a brokerage career Leasing and Sales Brokers primarily for retail and office assets down here in South Florida, and then I started using the cash that we were generating from brokerage activities to buy and operate retail and primarily office assets out in the midwest with a couple of Partners so the lens from which I view everything is generally from a real estate operator's perspective and that's how we were originally looking at truck parking and Outdoor Storage, we saw the supply-demand and balance specifically down here in Miami. We saw some yards back then that were charging $400 a month some guys were charging $500 some $250 and it peaked our interest there was a lot of opportunity to capture the upside and so the first thing we did was we spun up a third-party management company where we were boots on the ground managing these facilities checking drivers in showing them where to park sending them license agreements invoices chasing them for payment and all that. My co-founder Jose who's got a background in software, we started you know building little tools that we could use to help us in the management capacity, and then that kind of evolved and took off and became its own product, that we now offer to the market. Okay so that's useful, I didn't realize, what's the difference you think between the management of an asset versus what you guys do inventory control?

So in the traditional sense, we would be just a software provider to a property manager, right? So in traditional real estate, you might use Yardi or Buildium and then you know XYZ company managing your real estate, we are primarily the Buildium and the Yardi for some of our customers. We do get more involved on receivables for example, that's a separate service that we offer, if you've got a high volume of delinquencies and things like that we can use our customer support team. Yeah, that's me, full disclosure I'm a very happy customer of Rig Hut for some of our yards as well. So, give me a scale of how many yards do you provide software to or how many states kind of thing?

We hit the 100 mark a couple of weeks ago.

Congrats! That was a recent portfolio, right? Some investors signed up multiple locations with you guys.

Our most recent portfolio is four yards in a suburb of Atlanta, most guys that come onto the platform operate more than one yard or they operate very large yards. If you're in the y 20-30 spaces you can get away with not using software, you can use Excel and QuickBooks, but once you get past that number it becomes a little tedious.

I find it's true for commercial real estate though, It's kind of like guns, nobody owns just one piece of commercial real estate. If you have one, you know you have to have a friend and then you get a couple more, and you know it's so easy, and oh well buddy ... I'm a partner in my buddy's property and he has got money in my deal it's really something that nobody has just won and I think it's it's true for truck parking or iOS assets as well. So one question that I know a lot of people want to ask is: Do you enable people to do this remotely, would you say that's a primary driver? Do we enable people to operate their facilities remotely I'd say yes currently and that product is going to get even better once we launch a gate automation that we're coming out with later this month.

Awesome, all right well stay tuned I will drop the the Rig Hut website,Twitter and X if people want to follow, so they can see when that comes out, but yeah. I think it's really curious how you stumble upon truck parking and then just dove into it, and became an expert. I mean what are some of the craziest truck parking stories in Miami or other sites that you've had?

Generally for for monthly parking facilities I don't want to say they're completely low maintenance there is some management and customer service involved that we relieve a lot of, but generally these guys are dropping their assets and they're either going home or they're only staying with you for one night. I've heard some horror stories get circulated that I just haven't found to be true but you know things happen you clip a gate, you might clip another truck, and things like that generally get resolved fairly easily. One of our customers who shall remain nameless, he doesn't deal well with delinquencies.

I think the best stories I've heard is all the overnight truck stops, because you get a very transient crowd and you get a lot of characters dropping and mixing with other people that won't see again, it's where you get the what do they call them? I don't think they really exist, like prostitutes that hang around the yards anymore.

Lot lizards.

I don't know, I feel like I've never seen them at a flying Jays or a Love's, they're too respectable, so I gotta I got to lower my nightly rates somehow.

I've never seen them either, there's, we can go into this if you'd like, so Miami in terms of a market is kind of unique, where you've got what the county describes as the Urban Development boundary, which is this imaginary line, if you see those Gerrymandered Maps, elective Maps, it looks exactly the same. It's this imaginary line drawn by the County Commission that says you can build inside this line, you cannot build outside this line to a greater density than one home per five acres. So a lot of agricultural use are outside the Urban Development boundary some of those agricultural facilities have become truck parking yards, they're not supposed to be, but everybody caught wind, there's some income and their basis is super low, they've owned land forever so they're parking trucks out in southwest Miami Dade, which is an area called Homestead and we have heard some stories of what you're talking about out there, actually if you Google operation lot lizard there was a Miami Dade raid on Southwest Homestead truck parking facilities, but I don't think it's enforced because we just don't have enough capacity, there's still trucks parked out there they didn't get shut down.

Sure, yeah, back to the enforcement, you know a big part of our thesis is that rigorous City enforcement of the bobtail parking is good for business you know maybe 20-30 years ago you could just park your truck for a couple of days when you came home on a residential street maybe you could find an empty lot and people, for the most part, would leave you alone and you could just do it for free, now you've got every neighbor calling the police calling the HOA and they will ticket and they will tow you and they will find you and so the drivers as a result they have to find a paid location that is in a commercial district and yada doing things the right way so that's part of our thesis is that it is pushing these drivers into the proper parking channel, so I think enforcement ultimately is good for us it's doing things the right way.

Agreed, the same thing's happening down here in Miami.

So you talked about Miami um obviously you have assets that you control in Texas and Atlanta. What are some of the market rates? You can be as specific or kind of general, I would say be more specific as you can, can you just give us a survey? In my last video people were curious about hey, 500 bucks in Miami Dade off of 95, and then, we can get 200 in in Tarrant Fort Worth, 300 bucks in Dallas. What are some markets and pricing that you guys are seeing transact and not just listed prices?

I'll go through a couple of markets so if we start in Miami think of it as three tranches, right? That stuff similar to what's outside the Urban Development boundary or low-quality facilities, they're in like that 400-450 a month range, it's not if you've got high-value stuff you don't necessarily want to be there. Inside Miami Dade County, proper in a properly zone facility, in an industrial area you're going to be at 550 a month generally 550-600, there's one specific facility that I've posted on Twitter a few times named "Miami truck parking" which I call the four seasons of truck parking, very high quality.

That Relentless Capital bought?

Yes Relentless bought that right, they've got a food trucks, they've got palm trees, picnic tables...

I would stay there.

It's Immaculate, so they charge $750.00 a month plus tax and I think they're at $35.00 a day now and they're full with a waitlist, the best location in Miami, like geographically the best location and the highest quality facility. If you go to Broward, so one County north, closer to 95, you're in that same 525-550 range right Vantage Truck Parking or formerly Vantage now safe operates a site in Hollandale Beach that is Broward County, they only charge by the day, I think it's 30 or 32 a day and they're full, you know, guys are typically parking their monthly, so there's still some variability and rates there if you go to Atlanta for example that you're in like the 200 a month range generally if you're close to Atlanta proper, it'll drop as you get into the suburbs, and North Jersey we've got a lot of yards and data up there, the closer you get to Port Newark obviously the higher your rates going to be. The highest rates that we've seen up there on our participating facilities is $850.00 a month per truck and trailer combo.

Wow, and is that necessarily full of amenities?

No.

I mean, okay so I had this video where I talked about like the classes of truck parking, right? So my "class A" in my mind is fully paved, nice lighting, fully secured 24-hour, maybe it has on-site security or not, probably bathrooms, dumpster, that that sort of thing, that's "Class A" "Class B" is gravel, still fully fenced, still fully secured, you know automatic, maybe it's a manual gate, but it's should have lighting, it's not going to have those other things, but it should be an improved crushed rock or millings type of surface, and then "Class C" is that Southwest dirt no gate, no fence, park at your own risk, you know, don't leave diesel in your tank because it won't be there when you come back, kind of place, so for that the New Jersey, for 850 is that even a Class A, is that paved?

I'd say it's Class B, under your your definition, and New York has seen a drop in rates they're not getting $850 a month. Now they were at the peak right now some yards are still in the mid 700, 750, 775 which is still incredibly high right some of these guys are parking 10, 15, 20 trucks. Dallas, we're kind of testing rates right now so like at your facility, for example, I don't know if you want to talk numbers at your facility.

Sure, yeah.

What are we? 215-222 plus tax on new guys, and we're not getting too much pushback on that, and some of the the Legacy tenants were trying to bump them to you know 215 plus tax and we get some pushback from some guys, so I think we're right around there, low 200s in Dallas and you've got a nice facility.

Dallas is a little bit higher, in Fort Worth, but I was saying in Dallas is higher. Some of the Yards are fully paved there's class... what would I call Class A stuff near the airport it's 350-400, but those are nice fully paved stuff, again I don't know what you think makes a driver want to be paved versus the gravel.Is it just a question of the tires getting dirty, that the trucks getting dirtier or dustier?

I think it is a little bit of that, and then typically on a gravel facility if it's really being used heavily and trucks are turning on it you're going to get those divots, and then they kind of puddle when it rains and it might puddle you know where they're sitting on the tires or if they drop the jacks on the trailer which is typically where they're stepping out of the truck but overall I think it's more convenience and maybe aesthetic than necessarily functional like we've been on a bunch of gravel yards that are perfectly fine for parking asphalt ones are a little nicer but.

I think in Texas and I've repeated this line a lot of times I'm curious to hear your input on asphalt it just doesn't last in heat so in those higher temperature locations you hit 95 you hit 99 degrees for in Texas we're routinely in the hundreds the Turning truck is g to just tear up any asphalt you cannot make asphalt strong enough when it reaches, because that's the air temp the ambient the surface temp is much more 13 I mean it's like it's hot to the touch when it's black asphalt and so for that reason, I would say, I prefer gravel um because you just have to go concrete in our experience, so like in Arizona no such thing as asphalt truck parking it just do like why are you going to put it down it's going to tear up so people do concrete or gravel.

You know I actually learned that from you when we first met, I had never thought of the surface temps on asphalt because, well don't get hot enough down here.

Yeah the surface temps, I know we've kind of talked about it, yeah my dad does a little bit of truck parking, and outdoor storage, although he sold it recently. He's always been in real estate but he was one of these opportunistic guys who had land out in North Las Vegas and people would come by like "Oh yeah I just need to park my RV" or "I just need to park this bobtail", when I come back and he's "like sure how about you know 30 bucks a day" and 2how about 300 a month" then he filled up. I don't know what did he have like two acres or four acres but he had some of his own crap, he's one of these older owner-user guys, he has like six cars at least, they all run, but they're not nice and I'm like why do you have three cars that are not nice? Just sell them and get one nice car but. I digress, but yeah he's the one that kind of was telling me that because he was thinking about putting asphalt down to make it a little bit nicer it just gets very dusty in Vegas uh and he was you know living there so it like blow dust right so of those do you want to talk about any other Market or West Coast do you have anything?

I'll tell you something interesting that we learned with a new on board in Minneapolis uh it's actually Egan and Fremont are the names of this of the suburbs first of all highest Somali population in the world outside of Somalia so we learned that during onboarding we actually had to try to find a service to translate um our English because it was it was such a barrier so I forget the name of the specific municipality where it's banned exactly and you know where the borders are of the band but one of those yards that we onboarded is within the banned area but he has an exception to operate I don't understand how he got it maybe it's grandfathered I'm not entirely sure and and he's one of those yards that operates at more than 100% capacity he's got a lot of daily parking during the onboard period you can attest to this run we're very involved all of our team is talking to these drivers and making sure they're good and they know how to use the system so our number has spread in Minneapolis as the that have truck parking even though we don't we're just servicing One customer over there with a couple yards and the phone is ringing off the hook with drivers looking for parking in Minneapolis all day the phone rings, guys over there and they're at uh these two yards are at 285 a month for a tractor trailer.

And is it paved or gravel?

Gravel, fence access control, lights, cameras Class B. I don't know, is that borderline Class A?

The cameras are a weird thing to me, I thought more people would reach out to us requesting footage, but I can tell you that I have only gotten one request in five years and hundreds... not hundreds, dozens of incidents whether it's just hey something was broken or I think something this stolen, diesel is probably the number one, nobody has requested footage and they always tell us about it after the fact, maybe it's coupled with a rate raise, but they tell us just generally like "yeah you know I got...". I'm like "Why didn't you tell us earlier?" because they have trouble pinning down the exact time that it occurred but if they had told us on Wednesday that "my diesel got stolen over the weekend", I can at least go back and I can make a pretty good sifting because I care about it and I will go through the footage to try to find a truck or a vehicle, you know, a license plate something. I mean do you find that people just ignore the cameras? It's like- they're there as a deterrent but like guys, these are recordings they're uploaded to the cloud if something happens you need to say something otherwise what's the point of the cameras?

I agree we rarely got the request when we were running those facilities down here we got one, I can remember one time early on sitting in a trailer and going through footage and it was because a guy you know someone clipped his mirror which I understand but the other thing is the enforcement.

I think sometimes the guys just want to know they want the effort too. I've had a lot of appreciative texts that say" Holy you know you guys care the most out of any other yard I've parked, in the fact that you just respond or that you know you call me back"- and I'm over here like "hey guys this is just basic customer service, I call you back like two days later and I'm embarrassed and I'm apologetic because I'm coming from a real estate background where you know these tenants are paying me 20-25,000 a month it's a big deal, I have a duty to them uh or I'm a lawyer you know and I'm charging my clients a lot for them to get some level of customer service that previously did not exist, it was Mom and Pop, and nothing they were like "you get to Park here and it's a privilege, shut your mouth, and don't say anything, don't complain".

It goes a very long way, answering the phone.

Just answering the phone or texting back, okay, so that kind of goes into. My next question is, what is a market that you recommend from your observations? I mean here you're going to give all of the truck parking secrets from all of your properties, what is the location that you think is best?

I'm not recommending anything, I'll tell you which markets I like, I think if you have long-term money, places like Miami still have a lot of room to grow, if you walk into any yard down here they're full and we recommend to our customers to test similar how we're doing at your facility, let's see you know where the market is when are we going to start you know losing guys at what price, they don't do it, generally. Then like I said the discrepancy. You've got guys in the center of Miami Dade with well-located facilities paying 550 a month and then you've got Miami truck parking at 750 because they have asphalt, some palm trees, and a food truck like that's not that far out in terms of amenities, right? So, I think Miami has room to grow, we're very land constrained, geographically. I would consider the growth markets in Florida, if you look at Lakeland, it's on I4, smack in the middle between Orlando and Tampa it's experiencing a lot of growth it's got a big industrial presence, Publix has a big presence up there, I believe Walmart is the next biggest up there, followed by Target and you know some of those other big-box style retailers. I like Savannah, Georgia everyone knows generally Freight is moving off the West Coast into the Gulf and the East Coast ports, and we've seen rates move up. Savanah's got a big port.

They have a big, do they have rail, is that like an intermodal or is it just port access?

They have port access, I'm not sure about the rail, where the rail connectivity is, but I'm sure they do have it in Florida, more in Florida. I also like Orlando, everyone kind of scoffs a little bit when I say that because Orlando's a completely built you know MSA. right um but it's very Supply constrained in terms of industrial land.

Weird to me that you say that because, when I look at a market like Orlando I think that there's a lot of Farmland. I think it's very open, once you get out on 4, once you head you know East or West out on whatever that seashell highway is, because it seems very open to me a very short distance from the CBD, from the warehouse districts, it seems open but do you think it's that land is consolidated it's held by developers who are not going to do truck parking is that is that the difference?

I think generally the sentiment from the municipalities is they're not going to allow more of this outdoor storage style uses and the amount of appropriately zoned land in Orlando is very few it's basically that small pocket called Taft right south of Orlando by the airport and they're full to the gills, right?

So do you think you can make money buying an existing truck parking lot and solely managing it better and just raising rates, is that a play?

I think so, it's always going to be a function of your basis, right? Just like any other kind of real estate transaction if you buy it right, yes, right if the upside is available, I think that's certainly the case down here in Miami if you could find it doesn't have to be a steal, but you have to pay less than what it's worth, generally, that's what you want to try to be doing as a buyer, right? I think there's room to grow in rent down here.

Yeah, I think it's tough to buy some of the existing product unless it's severely uh mismanaged a lot of these owners just want Skyhigh pricing and it's funny I had a tip I was talking to my intern I said if you talk to any seller and if he says iOS you nope out of that call you cut it he's going to ask for something but if he calls it "a yard" or if he calls it "my land", then we're good to go and we can do a deal he'll get something reasonable but if he if the seller ever gets wind and it's like me if people say you know "iOS", I'm like you're gonna charge way too much.

Generally, it's true.

Well I'll kind of wrap it up from our side Jake, it was awesome having you on learned a lot about different rates and where there's demand, do you have any parting words for the audience?

No, I'd say thanks for having me truly it's a pleasure.

Awesome well drop your comments down below guys check out my channel for more truck parking videos and we'll see you next time.

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