Salina ? Truckers who are required by law to take rest breaks say they often have a hard time finding public places to pull over.

They say truck stop parking lots and roadside rest areas are often filled with idling 18-wheelers, especially in the evenings. That’s a problem for truckers, who are required to pull over after 11 hours of driving and rest for 10 hours.

Michael Brown, who’s been a trucker for three years, said he sometimes has to stop along an Interstate highway exit or entrance ramp.

“They’re just going to have to build more truck stops,” said Brown, who was taking a break recently at Bosselman Travel Center in Salina.

The most recent figures from the American Trucking Associations show that 2.7 million tractor-trailers rigs were on the nation’s highways in 2004, with drivers logging 117.8 billion miles.

A 2002 study from the Federal Highway Administration found that Kansas is one of 23 states that don’t provide enough truck parking spaces at public facilities. Kansas was not among 12 states with the most acute parking problems only because of it provides private truck parking.

The report found an estimated 315,850 parking spaces in public rest areas, travel plazas and private truck stops along the national highway system, which is one parking spot for every 8 1/2 trucks on the road.

In 2005, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration found that only 34 percent of drivers surveyed said they “almost always” or “frequently” can find parking spots at truck stops, and only 11 percent said they could find parking at highway rest areas.

Marvin Harrison, 68, a driver for Jim Palmer Trucking of Salina, said he sometimes drives at night because it’s easier to find a place to rest during the day.

Drivers can be fined $30 for parking along shoulders and highway ramps overnight in Kansas, but troopers usually just ask drivers to move to a safer location, said Lt. John Eichorn of the Kansas Highway Patrol in Topeka.