By Cara Jepsen
The second thing you notice is the giant Lotto sign–with its lighted rainbow beams and pot of gold–perched atop the red-and-white fuel island. The third is how quickly the numbers spin as the gas pumps into your tank; it takes about half as long to fill up at the Bobber as it does in Chicago.
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The Bobber’s attributes include the cafe, a CB shop, a knife shop (many truckers carry knives), a convenience store, a 24-hour garage with a full line of service (including parts and repair work), a motel with Jacuzzis in the rooms, a laundry, a TV room, a game room, a Goodyear tire dealership, truck scales, and six-dollar showers (or free with a fill-up). The Bobber recently added more parking spaces (bringing the total to 200), whirlpool tubs, and a buffet that attracts local residents as well as truckers, and plans for a Blimpie restaurant are in the works; one of the latest truck stop trends is on-site fast food. The truck stop employs some 90 people, including a nighttime security guard. (A recent issue of the Truckers News listed safety as a top priority for both truckers and truck stop owners.)
Jeff Smith, a long-distance trucker who looks a bit like Kenny Rogers, says truck stops used to be “dens of inequity.” He is on the road five days a week delivering lawn mower parts to dealers east of Ohio. He’s been driving a truck since he got out of the Navy in 1978.
She says the best tippers are couples and regulars. Her regulars have handles like Big Jay, Gingerbread, and TLC and work for companies like Yellow Freight, ABF, or Roadway. “They take an interest in how you are,” she says. “They ask you about your personal life. When you’ve worked here as long as I have, they find out things. I’m engaged to be married in May, and they’re always asking me about my fiance and my son. They’re always really curious and really easy to wait on.”
Many of the teams are made up of a husband and wife, although Smith says he is seeing more and more female teams, and platonic male-and-female teams. He says the married teams spend nearly all their time on the road. “They have the trucks set up, have their checks direct deposited, and their mail [forwarded] to them,” he says. “The truck is where they live, and some couples gross $115,000. But they do not live in a home.”
“When I go home at night I don’t want to be nice to anybody, I don’t want to talk to anybody,” she says. “It’s hard, after working there for so long. It happens to everybody. One of my friends works here part-time and makes really good tips because she’s so friendly and bubbly. That’s because she knows she doesn’t have to come back to it the next day.”
