Pump Rage At A Pilot Leaves A Driver Stabbed

My very favorite fueling places resemble the old 76 or TA at the NE of Atlanta along I-85 I think it was prior to the SC Line. 50 fuel lines, 25 to each side of the fuel desk island.

You cannot possibly block anyone, and I wondered if there was a pipeline supporting the truckstop fuel? If you consider 50 truckers pumping 300 gallons in 15 minutes flat each. that's 15000 gallons delivered. That's two 18 wheeler tanker loads of desiel. That's not soemthing you can keep up with a fleet of 100 fuel tankers running back and forth delivering only to a limited number of fuel tanks in ground supporting this fuel desk...

 

Maybe micro managers will get the truck fueling while moving like they do with some of the fighter jets...lol...they think we're robots as it is!!! Fuel in motion ahead signs...lol

 

Lol at the old Fairfield truck stop in Fairfield Maine they held your card until after you fuelled and moved, if you didn't move you were charged 35$ for holding up the line!! There was a big sign there with pump rules, I never had to wait.

 

Thats a great idea!

 

It was a terrible ideal.
Instead of drivers paying at the pump they would have to go in and stand in line and bluhbluhbluh and then go back in and stand in line and get the card,

 

Yeah. I would not be happy at all with such a policy and would just keep driving. We don't require receipts. Me, I'd head on out to the interstate after fueling like I always do, forget going inside to get the card, and get super-pissed later.

I won't even fuel up at the Pasco J and others because they don't have pay-at-the-pump. Broken reader? I'm liable to proceed down the road if I have the fuel to, rather then go inside and deal with all that BS waiting in line

 

Here's a simpler idea to keep things moving...FULL SERVICE fueling. Tell the attendant whether you want a full or partial fill, hand them the card and when you're done, you sign a tablet and the fuel desk is a little alcove where there is a printer...they get the receipt and return it with your card, then thank you and ask you to pull off and park for any other business.

The Pilot-turned-Love's in Bordentown NJ has a security guy on guard at the exit of the fuel island. If a vehicle is stacking up traffic sitting there too long, they know who to look for inside.

 

They can easier and cheaper install cameras overlooking the fuel area that looks for vehicles stopped for an excessive time and sound an alert. All sorts of technology exists to help deal with this problem in a systematic way. The bottom line is, they just don't want to and don't really care. As long as they meet their fuel target, they don't care if other drivers deal with crap throughout the day costing them a few hours [aggregate] of valuable time every day.

To be fair, it doesn't happen every day or every time fueling and these problems could be worse and more frequent. Problem is, given the trend, this problem will only get worse and more frequent with each passing year, especially as more trucks are forced onto electronic logging systems and various HOS timers remain in effect.

 

The only they time they seem to care is when the problem gets so bad and for long enough that the trucks literally get backed up onto the main road getting the cops involved or to a point incoming trucks see nothing but mass disaster and can bypass them and perhaps go to their competitor down the street ... then they're all kinds of on top of the situation.

I don't know about Ta/Petro or Loves, but with PFJ, you can't even voice a complaint via email. All they give you is a contact form where you're limited to 300 characters, and these seem to be ignored anyway in my experience.

 

And it seems to me, there are only a few select locations that seem to host the lion's share of the problems. Either due to physical layout, geographic location and having a near monopoly on local fueling options, or offering the largest discounts to the most carriers (a preferred or mandatory fuel stop), or having chronically lazy, slow, and/or too few counter employees during most peak hours