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In preparation for ºÚÁÏÉçÇøConnect, I took a fresh look at the trends influencing the industry. Truckstops and travel plazas should be adapting to each of these trends.

Truckstop and travel plaza operators came together in Orlando, Florida, for ºÚÁÏÉçÇøConnect 2019 and left inspired and informed. So many amazing things came out of the annual event. Here are a six highlights.

Insight Into the Future
We all want to know what the future holds, and much of ºÚÁÏÉçÇøConnect focused on helping operators prepare for the trends and technology that are coming down the pipeline.

During one keynote, ºÚÁÏÉçÇøPresident and CEO Lisa Mullings sat down with Dave Manning, president of TCW Inc. and Immediate Past Chairman of the American Trucking Associations as well as Dan Murray, vice president of the American Transportation Research Institute, to discuss the latest trends affecting truck drivers. Attendees got a first-hand look at how hours-of-service requirements, electronic logging devices and e-commerce are all changing professional drivers’ operating environment.

Stocking the right product mix is central to not only meeting customers’ needs but also growing sales. ºÚÁÏÉçÇøhas created a Product Mix To-Go Toolkit to help truckstop and travel plaza operators identify the right products for their locations.

Vendors are valuable partners can help truckstop and travel plaza operators learn more about industry trends, category performance and promotional plans. During ºÚÁÏÉçÇøConnect 2018’s Good-to-Great Workshop, Darren Schulte, NATSO’s vice president of membership, shared several ways operators can get the most out of their vendor relationships.

Now is a good time to promote the RV-friendly products you sell year round, as well as some holiday- and cold-weather specific ones.

Apparel can be a lucrative profit center for ºÚÁÏÉçÇømembers that invest in the category. Elizabeth Waring, president of Johnson & Johnson Inc., which operates Busy Bee locations, sat down with ºÚÁÏÉçÇøto share her thoughts on how she is making the most of apparel and the value it brings to her customers.

As I type this we have 56 days until Christmas. If you have not ordered your LED Christmas Lights for drivers to hang on their trucks you may already be out of luck. What about that bag with a handful of charcoal briquettes inside strategically placed on the counter and sold for a buck or so? Everyone loves to get a bag of coal for Christmas. If you do not have Christmas and other holiday gifts and products in the store already, get on the phone now and get them ordered.

I had the pleasure in the past three weeks to visit with owners and managers of a combination of 18 new and current member locations. I saw awesome stores with a lot of exciting happenings. I was, however, surprised to see how few of the operations had yet to prepare for the Halloween holiday let alone Christmas. We will talk Christmas on the next blog.

After a ºÚÁÏÉçÇømember asked me how she could drive more RV traffic to her travel center, I sat down with a friend who has spent the better part of four years and accumulated more than 100,000 miles traveling the country in a diesel-powered pickup towing a 30-foot travel trailer to learn more about his life on the road.

He shared his experiences and made some recommendations for how truckstops and travel plazas could better serve RVers.

He had a lot of great stuff to share! Here are seven more recommendations on how to attract and serve RV traffic.

Learn recommendations for how truckstops and travel plazas could better serve RVers.