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Parking doesn’t stop at 5 p.m.
People arrive late at night. They leave early in the morning. Equipment suddenly breaks down. And when something goes wrong after hours, someone still has to deal with it.
The question is: who?
In many parking operations, after-hours support is treated like an exception; something to patch together rather than plan for. But over time, those patches start to carry a real cost. Not just financially, but emotionally, for the people expected to keep things running.
When Third Shift Becomes a Workaround
Third-shift coverage is hard. Staffing is limited. Overtime and shift differentials add up quickly. And when no one is clearly responsible for after-hours issues, the burden tends to fall on whoever is closest, or whoever answers their phone.
At Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), after-hours parking support once relied on a communal cell phone passed between staff members.
“The biggest issue was at 10 o’clock at night and 5 o’clock in the morning, for that team member to remember to turn on call forwarding…if not, it just sat there and rang, and it never went to anybody,” said Brett Dodson, Campus Access and Commute Services Director at OHSU.
Missed calls didn’t just frustrate parkers; they created stress for staff, who often realized too late that something had gone wrong.
“There were times when staff would get home and realize they still had the phone in their pocket,” said Dodson.
That kind of system works…until it doesn’t. And when it breaks down, the cost shows up in employee burnout and operational risk.
The Financial Side of After-Hours Gaps
Staffing third shift isn’t just challenging, it’s expensive.
Overtime, overnight premiums and limited coverage often lead to stopgap solutions. One of the most common? Lifting the gate.
At the University of Southern California, after-hours staffing gaps meant the garage was frequently placed into free egress mode just to keep traffic moving.
“Transportation isn’t a 24/7 operation, and I don’t want to get calls in the middle of the night…We were just really stuck,” said David Donovan, Associate Director, USC Transportation.
Those workarounds quietly created significant revenue loss.
“We had somebody standing at the equipment, for sixteen hours a day, every single day for seven years…and we were experiencing revenue leaks that we weren’t even aware existed,” Donovan said.
In this case, the burden wasn’t just on staff, it was on the operation’s bottom line. And it wasn’t because anyone wasn’t doing their job. It was because the system wasn’t built for after-hours reality.
The Human Cost Is Easy to Miss
When after-hours coverage depends on on-call staff, communal phones or manual processes, it creates a constant low-level strain.
In many operations, highly trained staff end up acting as the backup plan, even when after-hours calls fall well outside their primary responsibilities.
As John Crawford, CAPP, former Parking Manager for the City of Colorado Springs, put it:
“Do you want an office staff person who is trained to do finances handling the help calls?”
It’s a simple question, but an important one. When organizations rely on internal staff to cover nights and weekends, the cost isn’t just overtime or shift differentials, it’s misaligned resources. People trained for strategic, financial or administrative work are pulled into reactive roles, often after hours, often unexpectedly.
Over time, that strain adds up. Staff burn out. Focus shifts away from core responsibilities. And after-hours parking becomes something people brace for instead of something the system is built to handle.
“By using Parker Technology, I can have that staff member focused on the primary tasks they are trained for. It is much more efficient to enlist Parker Technology’s help than to hire our own staff members to take calls 24/7,” said Crawford.
When After-Hours Support Is Designed Intentionally
When parking operations treat after-hours coverage as a core requirement, not an exception, the burden starts to lift.
Calls are answered consistently.
Staff are able to truly clock out.
Revenue protection becomes more reliable, not reactionary.
At OHSU, moving away from manual processes made an immediate difference for both staff and operations.
“With video, our call volume has gone down, and the time spent on calls has been cut in half,” Dodson said.
At USC, closing after-hours gaps helped eliminate revenue leaks that had gone unnoticed for years. And at CampusParc, third-shift coverage became sustainable without the cost of fully staffing overnight roles.
In each case, the outcome wasn’t just operational improvement, it was relief.
After-Hours Isn’t an Outlier
Nights, weekends and early mornings make up a significant portion of parking activity. Yet they’re often treated as something to “figure out later,” covered by workarounds, on-call staff or temporary fixes meant to get through the night.
Over time, those fixes take a toll.
They cost more to staff.
They introduce revenue risk.
And they place an ongoing burden on teams who were never meant to be the safety net.
When after-hours support is designed intentionally, the difference is noticeable. Staff can truly step away. Issues are handled consistently. And revenue protection becomes more reliable, not dependent on who happens to be available.
If you’re rethinking how your operation handles third shift, whether due to staffing challenges, rising costs or persistent after-hours gaps, our team is always open to a conversation.
It’s a chance to talk through what’s working, what’s not and how other organizations have approached after-hours coverage in a more sustainable way.
After-hours parking isn’t an exception. It’s part of the job, and it deserves a solution built for reality.
Claudia Lopez
Client Experience Manager
With over a decade of experience in customer service and the parking industry, Claudia is passionate about creating exceptional client experiences and driving operational excellence. She began her parking industry career with the City of Las Vegas in 2012 and later joined Parker Technology in 2022 as the Implementation Manager.
Since then, She’s earned a Parking Professional Certification and become a Certified Customer Experience Specialist (CCXP) through the Customer Experience Professionals Association. Now serving as the Client Experience Manager, She is leading Parker Technology’s Implementation and Client Success teams, ensuring clients receive outstanding support from onboarding through long-term partnership.