Truck platooning aims to form platoon of trucks along freeway corridors to save fuels and increase roadway capacity, but the presence of long platoons is problematic near merges where vehicles from freeway entrance have to make mandatory lane changes. An active platooning strategy that deals with merging of conventional vehicles is needed for platooning application in real world. The paper proposes an original approach to split platoon when approaching merging areas. The proposed strategy aims to provide safe and comfortable merging maneuvers for conventional vehicles while maximizing the efficiency for the truck platoon. This is achieved by deciding the position and time of the truck in the platoon that should open a large gap for merging vehicles. The problem is posed, based on reasonable physical and behavioral assumptions of truck platoon dynamics. A heuristic-based solution is proposed, and its optimality is verified through an optimization-based strategy. The strategy can deal with both individual merging and merging of a small platoon of vehicles. Applicability of the proposed solution is demonstrated via examples.