How's your 'truck stop town' doing?

Duende

Since Americans have cut back their driving by something like 40 billions miles over the past few months, I was wondering if 'truck stop towns' are feeling any negative effects? I'm talking about places that heavily depend on the viability of roadside diners, motels, fast food joints, roadside attractions, and the like.

I'm thinking specifically of a place like Breezewood, Pennsylvania. Ever been there before? It's basically nothing more than a .5 mile long junction along I-70, but is absolutely PACKED with the roadside 'services' mentioned above (the link has a picture). I gotta belive there are a lot of people in that rural area who depend on the vitality of passing motorists for jobs.

Anyone got any kind of 'front lines' insights and experiences to share?
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nero

I got talking to the owner of a diner along highway 15 in Ontario that was thinking of closing down and setting himself up in the selfstorage business instead. His comment was: "Last year there was no way you could cross the highway because of the traffic now you could play golf on it."
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pup55 · Expert Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 3853

TA Inc, is a publicly held company that operates a couple hundred giant truck stops across this wonderful land.

TA 10Q

They are publicly traded so they are required to tell us what they are doing. They are due to issue a quarterly report within the next few days. This is the one from May.

It says that their diesel fuel volume was down about 15% (on a "same store" basis), and they are losing money at roughly the rate of about a half million dollars per day, since for these guys, the cost of fuel has roughly tripled during this period. Last year for the same quarter, the only lost about 9 million dollars, vs. 48 million dollars in '08. They recently bought some truck stops from the Petro chain, on the theory that a bigger money-losing company is better than two smaller money-losing companies.

Many of the other of these truck stop companies (Flying J, Love's, Pilot) happen to be privately held, therefore no way to tell for sure how they are doing.

Natso

The National Association of Truck Stop Owners is the lobbying organization that represents this group, and if the attached press releases are correct, they are whining to the government about the current state of the transportation system, fuel prices, etc.

uNkNowN ElEmEnt

I live in a town that has a very high transient population. Tourism here is major, and I am at the moment right in the middle of the tourist season. In fact, the hotels in our and the two other neighbouring cities are sold out for the 4th night in a row (so 6 hotels here and those of the other cities), for the 5th weekend this summer, something that didn't happen last year.

If anything its getting worse. Someone forgot to scare all the tourists into staying home cause they are out in droves. We had a triathlon here last week, two major weddings and this week we have another wedding, a major music festival, a car show and a motorcycle rally. No end in sight.

CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1422

UE,
We also live near a "touristy" town. Much of the town's revenue comes from people who come to visit the lake and river, camp and fish, and attend the many festivals that are held here throughout the year. We haven't noticed a big drop in total numbers either. However, one thing that we have noticed is that a lot more people are vacationing closer to home.

It may be that the crowds in your area are not smaller, but represent people from closer cities checking out your area for the first time. I really hate conjoined words, but the "staycation" is gaining popularity as people realize how much more it costs to travel out of state.

I will say, though, that even though the crowds don't seem to be smaller here, I know they are spending less money while they are here. The manager of the local WallyWorld made comment over the 4th of July that their sales were down (by some ungodly amount that I can't remember) for the weekend - usually summer sales are through the roof here. The people are still traveling, but they're scrimping to do so, and traveling shorter distances.
Kathy

uNkNowN ElEmEnt

YOu might be right about that. Of all the hotels in the area we are one of the cheaper, though still in the 4.5 star catagory. I think people are going for cheaper entertainments too.

The only real big expense I haven't seen changing is the ungodly amount of money people are spending on their weddings. That is still far and away the biggest waste of money that people are able to justify to themselves.