12 Tools to Reduce Truckstop Shrink from NATSO

Out-of-stocks are silent profit killers, gnawing away at your bottom line in ways you might not even realize.

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 NATSO members.

NATSO has added two new staff members to its team, Jessi Frend and LeeAnn Goheen. Both bring unique experience and talents to NATSO.

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.

NATSO, the national association representing the nation’s 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 — 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.

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 […]

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.

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 NATSO 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.

Professional drivers and consumers are increasingly pressed for time, and it isn’t 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.

Part of any net operating cost improvement plan should include a robust plan to manage retail and cost shrink. “Reducing shrink is super important for increasing profitability. It is money plain and simple,” said Darren Schulte, NATSO’s 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. NATSO 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.

When Silver’s Travel Center rebranded its c-store location by franchising with On The Run by Circle K, it brought a new atmosphere to the store and led to a 15 percent increase in sales.

Every year, fires costs business owners billions of dollars – and that number doesn’t even begin to measure the impact fires have on businesses and families of employees who are injured or killed by the blaze. Fire Prevention Week, October 9-15, 2016, is a great opportunity to remember that preventing workplace fires is not a yearly, monthly, or even weekly activity—it is a daily activity. Investigations reveal that most fires can be prevented if businesses consistently pay attention to a few, very specific hazards. To help you and your employees make it home safely each day, your Federated Insurance team is excited to share a new resource: a customizable, fire prevention checklist.