The company making truck parking in Germany less of a daily gamble

After a long day on the road, the last thing a truck driver wants is to spend precious time hunting for a rest area; however, this is the daily reality for thousands of drivers crossing Germany.
 
Toll Collect, the state-owned company behind Germany's truck tolling system, thinks it can change that. By providing its open, real-time parking data to HERE WeGo Pro, the powerful navigation solution designed for professional drivers, it is much easier to get a live picture of where they can actually stop.
 
That means smarter routes, less wasted time searching for a space and a far better shot at staying compliant with strict driving and rest rules.

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In the thick of it

Germany sits right in the middle of Europe's freight network, which is great for trade but really terrible for parking.

"Germany is sort of a main transit hub in Europe," said Johannes Braese, Product Owner for Mobility Data Services at Toll Collect. "We have lots of freight passing through in all directions and often that leads to congested parking spaces along the highways."

For drivers, that creates a frustrating gamble. They want to deviate as little as possible from their route to stay efficient. But pull into a packed rest area near the end of your legal driving time, and you're stuck.

"Truck drivers have quite strict limitations on how much they're allowed to drive and when they need to take breaks," explained Braese.

As he put it, there are short daily breaks, longer rest periods between shifts and weekly quotas on top of that: "It's quite complicated catalog—the rules aren't optional and they're tracked by systems in the cab. So when a driver needs to rest, they really need to rest. The trouble is finding somewhere to do it.”

It's a common problem that costs money, eats into downtime and puts safety at risk.

Don’t stop believin’

So how do you map something as messy as live parking availability across hundreds of sites? Toll Collect's answer is clever: it skips the sensors entirely.

"What's unique about our approach is that we don't have any physical sensors on a truck parking spot," said Braese. Instead, the company uses data already generated by Germany's satellite-based tolling system. "Every truck has a small telematics device that continuously sends location data to Toll Collect. We process this mainly for tolling, but now we have a separate stream."

That stream produces a live view of the entire network—roughly 1,850 rest areas—and works out, minute by minute, how many trucks are parked at each one.

The big advantage? It scales. Here's why that matters:

• No installation: there's no hardware to fit at thousands of individual sites.

• No maintenance: one system covers the entire network instead of countless sensors.

• Full coverage: every rest area can be included.

Two become one

Great data is only useful if it reaches drivers where they already are. That's where HERE WeGo Pro comes in.

"HERE saw this data, understood that it would provide additional value in their navigation app and integrated our data into HERE WeGo Pro," said Braese.

For HERE, the integration solves a long-standing headache for the drivers it serves.

"While truck drivers operate under tight schedules and strict regulatory requirements, finding a safe and available parking space is still a major pain point across Europe," said Bart Coppelmans, Senior Director of Product at HERE. "By integrating Toll Collect's data into HERE WeGo Pro, we provide drivers with real-time visibility into parking availability across Germany's motorway network, helping them plan ahead with greater confidence, reduce stress on the road, and improve compliance with driving and rest time regulations."

The road ahead

So far, all public rest areas are covered, but private sites are next.

"Quite often you drive along the road, there's a public rest area which is completely full," Braese. "But if you left the autobahn at the next stop, there'd be a private parking where you might pay a few euros, but there'd be space and it would be safe."

That private parking data is set to launch in the second half of the year, and once published through Toll Collect's API, it'll flow straight into HERE WeGo Pro automatically.

Beyond parking, Toll Collect is also working on digitizing freight transportation paperwork, replacing the stacks of documents drivers currently carry for inspections. As Braese noted, the German government is "pushing quite hard to digitize" the freight sector and companies "should make use of these new opportunities to make their processes more efficient."

For fleet operators and drivers, the message is simple. Build parking into your route planning, use the live data and stop leaving rest stops to chance.