Love's

[Plutonic Panda]

Love's Travel Stops' deal to buy Trillium CNG doubles sale sites | News OK

[jn1780]

Loves is about to move their call center operations into the old West space on Memorial and Western.

[Pete]

Love’s buys Hertz building for expansion
By: Molly M. Fleming The Journal Record August 30, 2016

THE VILLAGE – A metro-based company is planning to grow. This week, it made sure it had the room to support expansion.

Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores Inc. purchased the Hertz Corp. building, 10401 N. Pennsylvania Ave. The building is directly south of the Love’s main campus, which is at the intersection of N. Pennsylvania Avenue and N. Hefner Road.

The building measures 120,736 square feet. Love’s also bought the surrounding 10 acres and another adjacent 6 acres.

The building was constructed in 1978, according to county records. The Oklahoma Industries Authority built the structure, on which Hertz had a long-term lease. The Oklahoma Industries Authority transferred the deed to Hertz in 2006.

Neither Hertz nor Love’s would release the sale price. The building’s market value is $7 million, according to Oklahoma County assessor data.

There are no employees in the building. They were moved in 2015 to the Northwest Expressway campus. There are information technology operations in the building, which includes computer equipment, said Bill Masterson, Hertz Corp. communications vice president.

Hertz has a lease agreement with Love’s. The travel stop company does not have immediate plans for the large space, though it is planning a renovation, said Doug Stussi, chief financial officer.

Stussi said Love’s ran out of campus expansion room in 2013, when it completed the 67,500-square-foot building for IT and accounting. Love’s also houses employees in the former Chesapeake Energy Corp. building at NW 63rd and Lake Hefner Parkway. Love’s has a call center on Memorial Road as well.

“We’ve always been looking at where we can fit people when we need to grow our business,” Stussi said.

When Love’s does get to move into the Hertz building, employees at the other campuses will be shifted around, which could leave some empty office space in the market, Stussi said, but not much.

“I don’t see ourselves throwing a lot of office space on the market because of this,” he said.

This year, Love’s is opening more than 40 stores in 28 states, which is a record number of new stores. The company also has plans to expand its truck tire care operations, its freight factoring, and its CNG refueling company, Trillium. As those areas grow, the corporate support staff will expand as well, which is when the Hertz office space will be needed, Sussi said.

Love’s has more than 390 stores in 40 states, with most sites being travel stops.

“As we add more stores, we need more people in customer service,” Stussi said. “As you add to the number of stores, you need more accounts. The boat is rising up because of the success of the business.”

[HangryHippo]

Man, Love's is one company I'd have loved to see relocate downtown. Very glad that they're continuing to grow successfully here in the city though.

[jn1780]

Loves have been trying to buy the Hertz building for a few years now, but Hertz always wanted too much for it and they always wanted a deal to keep their disaster recovery center there.

The Hertz building parking lot is lot bigger than it needs to be so Loves can expand onto this building if they wanted to and use the empty parking lot across the drainage canal.

[Pete]

[warreng88]

Spaced out: Love’s sees opportunity in parking

By: Molly M. Fleming The Journal Record January 26, 2018

OKLAHOMA CITY – Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores’ 2018 growth will be fueled more by the first part of the company’s name than the second.

Vice President of Sales Jon Archard said the company isn’t done building country stores, but there are more opportunities on the travel stop side.

There are 61 country stores nationwide, and the company is adding only one to that total this year, he said.

“We’ve made some significant investment to grow our national travel center network,” he said.

In November, Love’s completed its purchase of Speedco, an oil and inspection services company. There are 52 Speedco stores nationwide. Love’s added tire care services to its travel stops in 2008.

Love’s is building more than 40 travel centers in 2018. Travel centers come with truck parking, so the company is adding about 3,100 spots along the highways.

The need for truck parking dates back to 2002, but likely even earlier. When the trucking industry was deregulated in 1980, the amount of highway truck traffic increased. The change allowed carriers to set their own prices. Carriers were able to buy fuel from anyone as well.

Since 2005, continued revisions made by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration have required drivers to rest longer and more frequently.

Drivers are now spending about an hour trying to find viable parking, according to a December 2016 study by the American Transportation Research Institute. That can result in about $5,000 lost in cumulative wages.

There are about 3 million truckers on the road, and parking for only 300,000 of them, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Only about 36,000 of those spots are at rest areas. The rest are at travel stops, like Love’s.

“It’s a real issue,” Archard said. “There’s no question.”

The other challenge to the shortage, as presented in a Federal Highway Administration analysis, is that valuable highway real estate is being lost to private developments.

“Rising real estate costs make it more difficult for highway-oriented retail uses that cater to truckers to compete with other, more profitable land uses in the vicinity of highway interchanges,” the report stated. “But the cost of land, as well as potentially lengthy land use review processes at the municipal level for new sites, has made it impractical to build a large-scale, privately owned travel center in many regions with heavy truck parking demand.”

Archard said Love’s has been working for years to buy its sites, so the locations that will be built this year are the end-cap to a multi-year process.

“We’ve had a lot of people at work on these locations,” he said.

[MagzOK]

Love's is in the middle of building a new travel center at the US77 exit in North Denton on the west side of the highway. it's replacing an old, tiny, and outdated facility a couple miles north. It's going to be nice. We stop at one in Santa Rosa, NM regularly when we travel that way. It's fairly new, nice, and clean.

[T. Jamison]

Construction fencing is going up around the old Hertz Building.

[BlackmoreRulz]

Construction fencing is going up around the old Hertz Building.

Any details been released showing what they are doing exactly to this building?

[barrettd]

Any details been released showing what they are doing exactly to this building?

https://oklahoman.com/gallery/articleid/5636071

[Brett]

Congrats to Michael McDowell and to Love's for the NASCAR win at Daytona!

[Plutonic Panda]

https://www.oklahoman.com/restricted...F8114824002%2F

[Jersey Boss]

https://www.oklahoman.com/restricted...F8114824002%2F

Link is not available to non subscribers

[OkiePoke]

They are moving a manufacturing tire center to El Reno from Texas.

[ChrisHayes]

They are moving a manufacturing tire center to El Reno from Texas.

Are they talking about the one that just opened??

[Plutonic Panda]

Are they talking about the one that just opened??

Yes.

[DowntownMan]

Nice little acquisition for Loves. Continues their growth. Gives them several tollway locations in Oklahoma and Kansas.

[Ward]

People have no idea how big the Loves operation is.

They have a LOT of motels/hotels too

[scottk]

Nice little acquisition for Loves. Continues their growth. Gives them several tollway locations in Oklahoma and Kansas.

Are they keeping the EZ-GO Brand, or would they re-brand all turnpike EZG-O travel centers as a Love's...even though it doesn't fit their traditional travel stop model with showers, and many more semi truck services? Doesn't EZGO currently have Phillips 66 as the gas partner? Also, are the McDonald's a separate entity at the rest centers or would Love's also be able to re-brand them with one of their fast food partners? (Arby's, Burger King, etc)

[jn1780]

Are they keeping the EZ-GO Brand, or would they re-brand all turnpike EZG-O travel centers as a Love's...even though it doesn't fit their traditional travel stop model with showers, and many more semi truck services? Doesn't EZGO currently have Phillips 66 as the gas partner? Also, are the McDonald's a separate entity at the rest centers or would Love's also be able to re-brand them with one of their fast food partners? (Arby's, Burger King, etc)

That's a lot of new C-Stores for Loves. Loves has a few c-stores in smaller towns. I image they will rebrand them Loves. Some of the fast food restaurants are actually franchises owned by Loves (Arby's, Carls Jr, Subway,etc). Mcdonalds is space they would lease out. I used to work in store IT a few years ago and we had to maintain the technology for these food concepts. They have added a few more different types of food concepts since then.

They were just getting started with all the different hotels as I was leaving and they also do their own semi tire retreading for the Loves Tire Shops.

[DowntownMan]

That's a lot of new C-Stores for Loves. Loves has a few c-stores in smaller towns. I image they will rebrand them Loves. Some of the fast food restaurants are actually franchises owned by Loves (Arby's, Carls Jr, Subway,etc). Mcdonalds is space they would lease out. I used to work in store IT a few years ago and we had to maintain the technology for these food concepts. They have added a few more different types of food concepts since then.

They were just getting started with all the different hotels as I was leaving and they also do their own semi tire retreading for the Loves Tire Shops.

They also already have loves stations with McDonald’s attached. The Choctaw and i40 is perfect example.

[barrettd]

They also already have loves stations with McDonald’s attached. The Choctaw and i40 is perfect example.

I'm not sure if those are actually Love's owned McDonald's. For some reason I seem to remember hearing the McDonald's arrangements are different. I could also be completely wrong.

[Pete]

Love's at 800 S. Morgan Road:

One Building Addition: Showers, Customer Laundry Remodel Sales Floor: Update Finishes, Fixtures, and Equipment to new Prototypical Standards, Remodel Coffee Bar, Remodel Deli Island, New Office, New Subway/Godfathers Food Tenant, Remodel Food Tenant back of house, Relocate side vestibule. Remodel Exterior: Remove existing storefront and infill, Remove portion of overhang to add tower element and corner bump out conditions, Paint existing brick.

[BoulderSooner]

the loves at 122nd and I35 (just south of the turnpike) has now reopened after a full demo and rebuild ..