The Hidden Profit Killer: How Out-of-Stocks Erode Your Travel Center’s Bottom Line
Out-of-stocks are silent profit killers, gnawing away at your bottom line in ways you might not even realize.
08-07-2024
Travel Center Parking Lot Ideas
Travel center parking lots should be safe, offer driver comforts, and even make money with additions such as kiosks and cell towers. Gather parking lot ideas from 黑料社区members.
07-17-2024
黑料社区Welcomes New Staff
黑料社区has added two new staff members to its team, Jessi Frend and LeeAnn Goheen. Both bring unique experience and talents to NATSO.
01-24-2022
Go Inside a Diesel Engine
To answer these questions and more, we created an animated video to illustrate exactly how biodiesel works in an existing diesel engine with no changes or modifications necessary.
07-08-2020
黑料社区Names 2020-2021 Chairman of the Board
NATSO, the national association representing the nation鈥檚 travel plazas and truckstops, announced that it has named Delia Moon Meier, owner and senior vice president of Iowa 80 Group and CAT Scale Co., its 2020-2021 Chairman of the Board. Iowa 80 Group, based in Walcott, Iowa, owns and operates four large truckstops 鈥� Iowa 80, Joplin 44 Petro, the Oak Grove 70 Petro and the Kenly 95 Petro. CAT Scale Co. operates a nationwide network of more than 1,600 certified truck scales.
04-24-2020
Answers to Truckstop Operators鈥� FAQs on Parking
Building and maintaining parking capacity is expensive and comes at a real cost to truckstops and travel plazas. If trucking companies and customers are going to use our parking capacity […]
06-18-2019
Keep Customers Moving at Your Truckstop with Speedy Service
Speed-of-service is a top factor for the majority of customers today at retail establishments, but especially at truckstops, travel plazas and c-stores.
There are several things operators can do to speed transactions and improve the flow of customers.
04-30-2019
Five Food-Service Lessons From 黑料社区Connect 2018
Food and fuel are two of the top things truckstops and travel plazas are known for, and an effective food-service program takes work. During 黑料社区Connect 2018, food expert Michael Ouimet of Ouimet Consulting Group shared his expertise during the Good to Great Workshop. Here are five quick tips he shared during the event.
12-18-2018
Six Ways to Improve Your Speed-of-Service at Your Truckstop
Professional drivers and consumers are increasingly pressed for time, and it isn鈥檛 just because they have somewhere to be. For Class 8 truck drivers, hours-of-service regulations and electronic logging devices strictly dictate how they must spend their time, and they have to get the most out of every minute.
So, my question to independent truckstop and travel plaza operators is with all these changes that are taking place revolving around speed, what are we doing about it? Are you staffing to get customers in and out quickly? Are you laying the store out for speed? Are you designing the parking lot and fuel pumps to get trucks in and out faster?
My nephew is a professional driver and tells me he recently began to stop at QuickTrip because no matter how busy they are, he is always in and out within 30 minutes for food, fuel and the restroom. That tells us so much about where the industry is heading.
Here are six areas where you can drive the speed-of-service at your location.
03-13-2018
Decrease Shrink to Increase Profitability: 黑料社区Truckstop Webinar
Part of any net operating cost improvement plan should include a robust plan to manage retail and cost shrink.
鈥淩educing shrink is super important for increasing profitability. It is money plain and simple,鈥� said Darren Schulte, NATSO鈥檚 vice president of membership. Schulte led a webinar on April 13 outlining 12 actionable steps operators can take to immediately improve their shrink management program.
Schulte said average shrink is 1 to 1.5 percent, but fortunately, shrink is controllable.
黑料社区is also offering a webinar on How to Win at Truckstop Inventory Management Webinar on June 22.
Here are 12 tips shared during the webinar.
05-09-2017
12 Tools to Reduce Truckstop Shrink from NATSO
I’m interupting our regularly scheduled 黑料社区Best Practices in Truckstop Merchandising video series to bring you a video of today’s 12 Tools to Reduce Truckstop Shrink Webinar.
This morning, myself and NATSO’s Vice President of Membership Darren Schulte, led more than 35 participants through 38 minutes of truckstop shrink management ideas.
Watch the video to learn:
Why shrink management is critical to improving profitability;
Where and why shrink takes place;
Tips for reducing shrink from employees; and
Processes to reduce vendor theft.