50+ years of eating out
As a trucker I got a lot of experience with eating in restaurants and I miss the good old days !
It used to be a perk of over the road trucking, to be able to stop at a Mom and Pop T/S somewhere and get a taste of the local cuisine.
Then came TSA. James Ryder of Ryder Truck lines fame, or little r as we called them, Roadway was Big R, started "Truckstops of America" later to be sold and renamed Travel centers of America or T/A.
They competed with "76" T/S in the east and south and "SKELLY" and the like in the west, but TSA gave us a really good place to stop and get close to home cooking, until they were sold, at that point they started going down hill, "76" was sold, "Skelly's" were sold and a new franchises came on the scene, "Flying J". "Petro" and "Pilot" were growing and "Petro offered a good meal where "Pilot" and "Loves" just offered fuel and junk food. "Petro" got sold to the same company that owned T/A and turned it to crap. That was about what we had to deal with as most other places wouldn't allow trucks in their lots for various reasons.
"Pilot" eventually bought "Flying J" and a few Mom and Pop's so that there isn't much difference where you eat, it all tastes about the same, like crap.
My last post I offered an E-book for anyone that was thinking about starting their own restaurant and here would be an excellent place to start. If you could get into a busy T/S and fashion your restaurant after an upbeat hamburger shop with several different menu items, all using hamburger as the main meat [ the new breed of trucker has settled for cheeseburgers and French fries ] you could do well.
I wish I would have been privy to this information about 40 years ago, I would have retired from trucking and had a quality restaurant now.
Keep on Keepin on, Dutch
