Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores is planning to add 40 new locations across 28 states this year along with an additional 3,200 truck-parking spaces across its 40-state truck stop network.
“We’re adding larger parking areas in new locations and we’ve been expanding the parking availability at existing locations,” Frank Love, co-CEO of Love’s, told Fleet Owner. “Parking is clearly a concern for the trucking industry. We recognize this and are doing our part to provide solutions.”
He added that the truck stop chain – which currently operates 360 locations – is coming off the busiest year of store openings in company history, opening 27 new locations and adding more than 2,000 truck-parking spaces in 2015.
Love noted that 20 of the new locations the company plans to open this year will be along state and federal highways in order to more conveniently serve truck drivers in more areas, with all of its new travel stops offering a range of truck driver-focused amenities including showers, diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), and quick-service restaurants.
The company also plans to expand its interstate hotel business, adding 10 hotels in 2016 – positioned adjacent to its travel stops – to the four it already operates.
“We have found that hotels are a logical extension of the services and hospitality we already provide on the road,” Love noted. “Most of our customers are traveling away from home and we’ll do anything we can to make their lives easier and more convenient. Hotels help us to accomplish that goal.”
The travel stop chain will also begin working with three new restaurant concepts in 2016, bringing Love’s total number of quick-service restaurant partners to 19.
Love’s first Dunkin Donuts will open in Canaan, NY, in late January, followed by its first IHOP Express scheduled to launch in Sidney, NE, this spring, with the company’s first Taco John’s will also begin serving Customers in Liberal, KS, this spring as well.
