Harnessing economic potential of trailer parks

It is usually mentioned that a legitimate business of about N900,000 has been transacted if a trailer (articulated vehicle) load of goods moves from Lagos to any major city in the far northern states. What is of important note here is that at the near-snail pace at which these trailers move, they must of necessity spend a good chunk of a week on the road. Therein lies the great potential for doing business.

Trailer drivers and their assistants (“motor-boys”) are known to be heavy spenders because, in addition to the legitimate waybill, underground haulage businesses exist to ensure that the drivers and motor-boys augment their pay and have enough money to spend on their often perilous and lonely journeys.

It is known that wherever these drivers and “motor-boys” make as their truck-stops, that place experiences a boom in business activities and an uptick in the social life, often on a disorganised scale.

These booms and upticks are what state governments should help organise so that the often romanticised “trailer parks” that form in the consciousness of many Nigerian travellers would become veritable business centres that would draw in revenues for the host state governments.

State governments interested in this idea should build very expansive parking lots for these heavy-duty vehicles off the shoulders of major motorways at designated locations within the boundary of the states where trailers that have repaired for a long rest would be charged bearable parking fees and their drivers and entourage encouraged to board in clean, self-contained single-room affairs.

Any such inviting environment would ensure that the drivers and their entourage spend “a little” over there before moving on. Such rested bodies and minds would have minimal propensity to be involved in road accidents.

Sunday Jonah

Minna, Niger State.