Truck Stops

I miss there being truckstops. There are so very few of them left.

I was in one of the few...the very few....left a while ago.. It's called Lamar Truck Plaza (Plaza being spanish for stop?)

It's got what truckers need.

A well stocked convenience store..with TRUCK STUFF in it...(chains, straps, binders, various accessories specific to the trucking industry).

It's got a for real, Sit Down type resturaunt with waitresses and cooks and stuff like that...and real food...and variety. NOT like a "fast" , junk food place.

It's got a garage where they can do , at least, minor maintenance and tires.

It's got large clean showers.

It's got laundry facilities.

And finally it's got a LARGE, partially paved even, parking lot. Four wheelers discouraged from being there.

As well as other stuff .


There are so few of them any more. Most are "Travel Plaza's"...or "Stopping Centers"...or some such rot. It's like the management is ashamed to be associated with trucks. Going to one is like a drug buy...they "metaphorically speaking" give us our "product" (diesel and some junk) ...then hurry (us) away. I'm amazed that brown paper bags aren't involved.

I was in a flying J near Birmingham Alabama once ....my battery was dead and I needed a jumpstart. I asked the manager if anyone did that? He said that I'd have to have someone come in as they didn't have any such thing on site.

I ...speaking Rhetorically....lamented the fact that a TruckStop didn't have such services available.... He very promptly and vehemently informed me that Flying J's were NOT truckstops...they were travelsomethingorothers.

Oh.

I...personally...wonder why they're abandoning us? It's not as if we don't give them great big heaping wads of money. Every time I fill up my tanks there's another five hundred bux gone.
A meal usually destroys the better part of a ten..if not a twenty.

Mystery.