FDOT breaks ground on new truck parking site in Seminole County

FDOT broke ground in Seminole County on a truck parking site meant to chip away at one of Central Florida’s most persistent freight headaches: nowhere safe to stop. The new lot is planned for the northwest quadrant of School Street and U.S. 17, also known as Monroe Road, in Sanford, and bid documents say it will add 132 spaces.

The Seminole County project is part of a larger regional push tied to the Interstate 4 corridor, where FDOT says the state’s freight traffic is concentrated and where drivers have long struggled to find legal parking. Across Central Florida, the program is expected to add 917 truck parking spaces at five sites, with the first three sites in Seminole and Volusia counties expected to be finished by mid-2027. Two additional sites in Osceola and Orange counties are expected to begin construction in 2027.

FDOT has cast the work as both a safety fix and an economic necessity. The agency says truck drivers deliver nearly 80% of Florida’s freight and that I-4 carries 95% of the state’s consumer goods. Federal officials have said about 40% of truckers spend more than an hour a day searching for parking, a burden that can slow deliveries and push drivers toward shoulders, ramps and other unsafe places when they run out of time under hours-of-service rules.

That safety argument has been central to the broader federal backdrop as well. The Federal Highway Administration has described truck parking shortages as a national safety concern because drivers need safe, secure and accessible places to rest. FDOT says it has done more than 30 research studies and papers on the problem, and its District 5 truck parking study says the shortage hurts both safety and economic competitiveness.

For Seminole County, the Sanford site is the latest step in a plan that first surfaced publicly in 2023, when FDOT moved ahead on I-4 truck stop plans that included a location off I-4 and U.S. 17/92. Seminole County leaders had previously pushed for a site near that interchange with about 131 parking spots. The new design, at 132 spaces, is slightly larger, but the broader question remains whether one lot can make a meaningful dent in illegal or dangerous truck parking along one of Florida’s busiest freight corridors. FDOT’s answer is that it is trying to build a network, not a single fix, and that the Seminole County lot is one piece of a larger freight strategy already moving toward 2027.