It’s a simple equation. More trucks means more diesel demand. The decade between 2009 and 2019 was a period of growth for the trucking industry. As the economic recession of 2008 turned around, freight tonnage embarked on an extended period of cargo growth, from about 9.35 billion tons of freight in 2009 to 11.84 billion tons 10 years later, according to industry reports, an increase of 26.6%.

With more drivers logging more miles, it’s no surprise convenience retailers saw opportunity during this period to serve the needs of professional drivers. RaceTrac reacted with the opening of its first travel center with a larger lot and high-flow diesel lanes in Atlanta in 2018.

Since then, on the heels of the Covid pandemic sparking another recession and creating supply chain challenges, truck cargo totals have been volatile, up one month and down another. Still, tonnage is expected to grow to nearly 14 billion tons over the next decade. 

And convenience retailers have responded by investing in travel centers across the United States.

Featuring Familiarity

The Speedway brand may be the grandfather of major convenience retailers operating travel centers. It owned 240 commercial diesel locations when it was acquired by 7-Eleven Inc. from Marathon Petroleum in 2021.

7-Eleven recognized the opportunity in scaled-down travel centers—no showers, trucker lounges or large-scale amenities, such as theaters or barber shops—and renamed the business the 7FLEET Diesel Network.

“Since then, we have added more than 135 [travel-center] locations across our family of brands, bringing our total to over 375 locations,” said Marissa Schneider, director of commercial fleet for 7-Eleven. And there’s more to come as 7FLEET looks to grow to more than 500 sites by the end of 2026. “We continue to see more and more commercial drivers’ desire to fuel for business at the same convenience stores they grew up on.”

It’s that brand familiarity that opens opportunity for convenience retailers.

“The opportunity lies in trust and consistency,” Schneider said. “Drivers are increasingly choosing to fuel at stores that they grew up with because they feel cleaner, safer and have familiar offerings. 7-Eleven’s national brand presence and heritage resonate deeply with that audience and gives us a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving travel center landscape.”

RaceTrac’s experience has been similar since opening its first travel center seven years ago.

“We quickly realized there was an appetite among professional drivers for RaceTrac’s style of convenience store offering and that there was a chance to reimage it with added amenities, including truck parking and CAT scales,” said Nick LaFalce, RaceTrac marketing manager, B2B fleet and professional driver campaigns. 

Today, the retailer operates 94 high-flow diesel stores under its RaceTrac and RaceWay retail brands. The sites include 32 travel centers and 62 smaller-format c-stores that include high-flow diesel lanes dubbed EDO, or Expanded Diesel Offering, stores.

Beyond the Pump

To the untrained eye, those separate diesel lanes appear to be the primary differentiator between the travel center sites and a standard c-store. But there are many other variances in the two businesses.

“The model is so different,” said consultant Peter Rasmussen, founder and CEO of Convenience and Energy Advisors. “I worked for Wawa for 17 years. They were high-volume stores. But if you had just dropped me in a Pilot Flying J store without any training, I’d have so many questions. What brings customers there? Are they on fleet agreements so they have to go there? Are they independent and using some of the aggregator programs that bring you into the travel center?”

Beyond separate diesel fuel islands, pricing and promotional campaigns differ widely, he added. Foodservice often includes more variety, from grab-and-go to full-service restaurants. The need for larger lots to allow truck parking is paramount. Managing loyalty requires an entirely different strategy.

“Travel centers are built with an entirely different guest segment in mind,” agreed LaFalce. “Whether it’s the layout of and amenities on our lots or the food and merchandise offerings you can find in-store, nearly every element of our travel centers is built to cater to the needs of the professional driver on their routes.”

It starts with lot size and cost. Adding a second fueling island, one with enough room for multiple semitrailer trucks to maneuver and park, is a significant expense. 

“Our travel centers are built on larger lots, about eight to 10 acres, with a larger convenience store footprint of about 8,000 square feet,” LaFalce said. The average c-store in the United States is about 3,000 square feet and built on a 1.6-acre lot, according to NACS and NIQ TDLinx.

7-Eleven’s 375 7FLEET sites across more than a dozen states provide about 4,500 spaces for truck parking, an average of about 12 parking spaces per site.

“Truck parking is a big issue right now,” Rasmussen said. “There’s not enough capacity for it.”

The increase in truck traffic is part of the issue. Further, federal limits to the number of hours a trucker can drive (generally, 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour shift and a required 30-minute rest every eight hours) to limit driving fatigue require down time before returning to the road.

More retailers committing to serving professional drivers provides some relief. Technology is helping as well. Mobile apps like Trucker Path, Truck Parking Club and others allow a driver to reserve parking time at a travel center on his or her route, sometimes requiring a fee. 

“[Travel center] operators have strong opinions about whether you should charge for parking or not,” said Rasmussen, who was named to the NATSO Technology Steering Council in January. “The majority say you should charge at this point. And drivers probably appreciate that because when you’re running out of hours, you need a place to park. After a long day, you don’t want to be circling trying to find a spot.”

Building Loyalty

Loyalty to a store typically means something different to truck drivers than the average consumer. Rather than collecting points for freebies or cashing in on a limited-time buy-one, get-one offer, professional drivers are often beholden to a particular retail brand by the fleet-card agreements arranged by their employers.

“For them, cents-off per gallon is less relative because drivers are on cost-plus or retail-minus agreements,” Rasmussen said. “The way that you price the store is so different because if you serve fleet drivers, they are less price sensitive, while if you’re serving independent drivers, price may be super important.”

For fleet drivers, “it’s not that you see a sign that says ‘Truck Stop Ahead’ and you pull in, or you see the street diesel price, because everything is determined by prearranged digital agreements now,” he said. “The mega-fleet accounts—Walmart, Werner Enterprises, J.B. Hunt and so on—those drivers have to fuel at specific chains [to get prearranged discounts].”

And that’s where convenience retailers find opportunity, catering to the smaller fleets that make their way off the highway and into smaller, denser communities, which in many cases includes Amazon truck drivers.

“They’re going after the smaller fleets that include the day-cab drivers and might include 50 to 100 trucks, or in some cases 50 trucks or less,” Rasmussen said. “They could be on fleet agreements, but many times they’re using digital programs, with Mudflap being the biggest one.”

The Mudflap app and others like it work with independent travel centers or those with smaller footprints to provide discount fuel offers similar to fleet agreements to professional drivers. In late April, Mudflap reported it was saving drivers an average 22 cents per gallon.

Appealing to these smaller fleets is part of the marketing for 7-Eleven’s 7FLEET network, which offers a consistent payment experience that includes multiple fleet payment options, according to Schneider. 

“A site’s inclusion in the 7FLEET Diesel Network tells our commercial customers that they can depend on these sites to meet their commercial needs, most notably their fleet payments,” she said. “We understand these customers, and we have a robust fleet payment portfolio. 7FLEET means customer confidence to these commercial payments.”

Growing Competition

Traditional c-store brands that play in the travel center market today include Casey’s, Kwik Trip, QuikTrip, Sheetz, Wawa and more. With so much new competition targeting professional drivers as customers, how are traditional travel center brands—Love’s, Petro, Pilot Flying J, TravelCenters of America and others—adjusting?

“Love’s remains committed to serving all customers, especially professional drivers who play a critical role in maintaining supply chains,” said David Hanson, director of business administration and strategy for Love’s Travel Stops. “Love’s is always listening to customers and working to provide the items and services they want and need.”

For Love’s, that means offering more fresh food made on-site, as well as including the infrastructure to someday add EV chargers and serving nonprofessional motorists on road trips across the country with RV hookups and dog parks. The retailer is making technology improvements as well, updating its app to allow drivers to reserve a shower stall, start diesel pumps or pay for fuel from their cabs. Love’s plans to build 20 new travel centers and remodel 50 sites this year.

Similarly, Pilot Flying J’s three-year-old New Horizons Initiative has it upgrading more than 200 of its travel centers, “continuously integrating feedback from team members and guests after every remodel.” The retailer also partnered with General Motors and EVgo to build out a network of about 2,000 350-kilowatt EV chargers to as many as 500 of its travel-center locations across the United States. As of March, about 130 EV chargers had been installed.

The bottom line? Truck traffic and the need for diesel fuel is expected to continue to grow.

“Diesel demand is expected to increase over the next 10 years,” said Greg Caponegro, general manager of light oil sales for Citgo. “Diesel growth is helped by industrial growth in transportation—that means heavy-duty vehicles, buses and construction equipment—the rise of e-commerce from Amazon, and the freight transportation that goes along with getting those products to the different depots where they drop them off [for local delivery].”

While Atlanta-based RaceTrac’s LaFalce said the primary opportunities for convenience retailers in travel centers are providing cleanliness and speed of service, the company has also found another advantage in introducing the brand to new markets.

“Targeting and catering to professional drivers will open the door to new markets for our brand as we continue to pinpoint locations near or on key freight lanes that carriers are running,” LaFalce said. “Our real estate team is always on the lookout for convenient locations that drivers won’t have a difficult time finding or driving to off the interstate.”

Darren Schulte, interim CEO and vice president of membership for industry association NATSO, expects the opportunities in travel centers will continue to bring new retailers to the channel. He calls it a good thing.

“Any time you get additional competition in the private sector … it adds great improvements to the area,” he said. “We’re talking about companies like Wawa or Sheetz or Kwik Trip. They’re very, very well known for their speed. ... That’s a perfect business model for our interstate customers. When you or your family are going to see the grandparents, you want to get in and out of a travel center fast. What these businesses have done is make our industry better.”