Drivers wheeling into any full-service truckstop today can be confident they will find 24-hour fuel and food service, private showers, a comfortable lounge, plenty of telephones, a well-stocked driver's store, a full selection of credit and billing services, laundromat, scales, and probably a return load call board, game room and ATM.
It's no surprise to encounter added amenities like chapel, barbershop, shoe shine stand, fax machine, exercise room or even a dentist, chiropractor's office, pet exercise area and grooming services, hair salon, tattoo parlor, dry cleaning and Internet access.
It was a different story in the early days of trucking, of course. If you're an old-timer, you may recall the now-tattered survivors of the old "mom-and-pop," gas pump-and- diner era that flourished in the '30s and '40s.
After World War II there was a big surge in the volume of U.S. intercity truck tonnage, and the growth in over-the-road trucking spurred the introduction of large, specialized facilities to attract fleets and their drivers even before the Interstate system was completed.
A 1952 article in Popular Science magazine called attention to "the world's biggest service station for trucks," a million-dollar establishment on a 10-acre lot on busy Highway 99 in Bakersfield, Calif. Then seven years old, the pacesetting Motor Truck Sales and Service stop (today a truck and auto dealership) boasted innovative features such as showers, dormitory sleeping facilities and a 24-hour "truck drivers' own lunchroom."
Charles Reinauer, one of the founders of the National Association of Truck Stop Operators (NATSO) and for many years owner and operator of Reinauer Truck Station in Mahwah, N.J., recalled that one of the first postwar improvements for his facility was expansion of the "bunk room" for truckers on the second floor of the building.
The old bunk room was 10-by-14 feet and could sleep nine men. The new quarters were 30-by-78 – including a soundproofed room called "Snorers' hall" – and could accommodate a total of 60 men. Those were the days before private showers. The more elegant truckstops had tile showers and washrooms, but they were still communal facilities shared by all the – male – drivers, as though they were in a military barracks.
When NATSO was formed in 1960, the association introduced a magazine for member truckstop operators (edited by Dave White, later founder and operator of White's Truck Stop in Raphine, Va.).
An early article in the magazine described with admiration the newly completed Truck 'Otel stop in Fayetteville, N.C., noting: "The tiled showers are spotless, and are kept so by a full-time janitor.
"For sleeping quarters, the driver has his choice of the bunk room (22 bunks in all, partitioned off four to a section) or he can have his own private room, each complete with twin beds, chairs, table and reading lights." For some veterans of the ramshackle facilities of the 1930s and 1940s, it must have seemed like heaven.
A 1968 promotional brochure put out by Pure Oil – the company that pioneered development of a truckstop network and later was merged into Union 76 and ultimately TA – indicates the rapid changes that took place in truckstop facilities during the 1960s.
Citing all the conveniences like drivers' lounges, "carpeted roomettes with showers," tire banks, Western Union TRX stations, money order services, etc., the four-page illustrated folder concluded: "The 1968 Pure Truckstop network…It's a far cry from the old bunk-and-shower days."
