WESTLAKE, Ohio – As it steps away from the stand-alone convenience-store business, TravelCenters of America LLC has opened its first four travel centers under its new TA Express smaller-format brand. The new-concept stores are in Alexander, N.D., Walsenburg, Colo., Brush, Colo., and Grand Junction, Colo.
TA Express offers “smaller, more nimble facilities allowing drivers to fuel faster, fulfill basic travel needs and return to the road,” the company said.
The TA Express locations will offer most of the fuel, merchandise, food and other services that professional drivers familiar with the existing TA and Petro brands have come to know.
Professional drivers can earn and redeem UltraONE loyalty points at TA Express sites. For motorists, TA Express will provide branded gasoline options, national food offerings, convenience items and clean restrooms.
TravelCenters of America is developing the TA Express network across the nation’s interstates and other heavily traveled highways, it said. Franchising TA Express units will be one avenue of growth.
"TA has served the needs of professional drivers and motorists for nearly 50 years,” said Barry Richards, president and COO of TravelCenters of America. “We’ve listened to our customers and have adapted our facilities to meet their needs, including their need to have our locations in some areas where you just cannot put a large format TA or Petro travel center. New distribution centers countrywide have changed freight patterns and call for additional fueling locations not restricted to interstates and 25-acre parcels.”
The newly branded locations consist of two new additions to the company’s fueling network in Brush and Walsenberg, Colo., a TA-operated site known as The Wild Bison in Alexander, N.D., and the conversion of a TA in Grand Junction, Colo.
In early September, TravelCenters of America announced that it is selling its 225 stand-alone Minit Mart convenience stores and other related assets to Blackburn, U.K.-based EG Group for $330.8 million to devote more time, resources and expertise to its travel centers.
- TravelCenters of America is No. 16 on CSP’s 2018 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by number of company-operated retail outlets. EG Group, which also owns the former Kroger c-store network, is No. 10.
TravelCenters of America, with headquarters in Westlake, Ohio, offers diesel and gasoline fueling, restaurants, truck repair facilities, convenience stores and other services in 43 states and in Canada, principally under the TA, TA Express and Petro Stopping Centers travel center brands.
Photograph courtesy of TravelCenters of America
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