SHOW AND TELL
TravelCenters of America prides itself on making truck drivers’ days
BY JENNIFER BARNETT REED Contributing Writer
The world of professional truck driving
has changed dramatically in the 43 years since Phil Saunders founded the small trav- el center company that eventually grew into TravelCenters of America, owner of the TA and Petro Stopping Centers chains. Keeping up with those changes — and, when possible, anticipating them — is a point of pride for the company’s current leaders. “We’ve got a model that allows us to be
flexible and accommodate emerging tech- nologies and emerging wants and needs,” said Tom Liutkus, TravelCenters of America’s vice president of marketing and public relations. It’s a model that has served the company
well through decades of ownership changes and mergers. TravelCenters of America, headquartered in Westlake, Ohio, is now the largest publicly traded full-service trav- el center company in the United States, with 252 locations and 15,000 employees. Yearly revenues top $6 billion. The company has always focused on
building travel centers with a big enough footprint to provide the amenities profes- sional truck drivers have always needed, Liutkus said — showers, lots of parking, sit-down dining, maintenance and repair shops — and still have room to adapt and add new services, such as underground storage tanks for diesel exhaust fluid and pumps for natural gas as needed. “As drivers’ needs evolve, and new
things have to be found to be placed inside our facilities, being larger gives us the advantage and ability to accommodate those things,” Liutkus said. “We believe that no matter what happens — even if it all goes to electrical generating units on
30 BEHIND THE WHEEL ~ Q4 Winter 2015 Photo courtesy: TA/Petro
trucks — we wouldn’t view it all that dif- ferently. Drivers would still have to pull up, put an electrical cord in their trucks, and drive on.” Second, company leaders several years
ago started meeting with truck drivers from around the country to talk about what drivers need and want. “Our president and his senior operating
team would go across the country, pick a market, and have breakfast with one group of drivers in the morning, lunch with another group, and dinner with a third group,” Liutkus said. “They’d just open it up for a dialog. What do you need? What aren’t we offering you today that would help you be more efficient, more comfort- able, and more respected?” One thing they heard repeatedly,
Liutkus said, was that drivers wanted help getting and staying healthy. So the compa- ny put in fitness centers at more than 50 of its locations — with 24/7 access for drivers with one of the company’s free loyalty cards — and added healthier options to the menus of the travel centers’ sit-down and fast-food restaurants.
TravelCenters of America also created a
reservation system for parking spaces in response to feedback from drivers. It’s been a hit with women drivers, wide-load teams that have to park next to each other, and other drivers who simply can’t spend time looking for a parking spot. “It’s not for everybody, but it’s enor-
mously popular for drivers who want it,” Liutkus said. “Drivers are saving money because they don’t take two hours every day to find a parking spot. Those hours are spent moving forward.” Another major change that came out of
the company’s conversations with truck drivers was in how TA and Petro employees are trained to relate to their customers. Training used to be limited to the technical aspects of the job, Liutkus said — how to operate a cash register or input a restau- rant order. Now, new employees also learn about the trucking industry itself, and pro- fessional drivers’ need for efficient service when they’re on the clock, and a little friendly pampering when they’re not. “We taught them to think about ways to make a person’s day,” Liutkus said. BTW
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