Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores Inc.

Love’s is family-owned and -operated by the Love family. In addition to travel stops, Love’s operates Love’s Country Stores, a c-store brand; Love’s Truck Tire Care, a tire-care brand; Musket Corp., a trading and distribution firm; and Gemini Motor Transport, a petroleum hauler. The chain had a record-breaking 2016 in that it opened 47 new locations, the most it has ever opened in a single year since its inception in 1964. It opened 36 in 2017.

Love’s competitive advantage is its numerous types of stores and services, all dedicated to “Clean Places, Friendly Faces,” including Country Stores, which are typical convenience stores; Travel Stops, which cater to trucks and travelers by providing overnight parking, pay phones, driver rest areas, Pegasus Trans-Flo and trucking supplies and tire centers; a growing interstate hotel business; and storage facilities.

Most recently, the chain partnered with Boston-based GasBuddy to offer payment via the online pricing service’s app.

Source: Convenience Digital Resource Library, Technomic. For benchmarking purposes, store counts are year-end 2017.

Photo courtesy of Love's.