horrible truck stops

What Flying J is that, good driver?

 

You're talking about the Pilot on McCarty, just outside loop 610.

 

Sadly there is a truck stop I have to add to the list,which is shame because it used to be a good one until the previous owners sold it awhile back.

Stockman’s Truck Stop
I-494,Exit 64A(Hardman Ave)
South St.Paul,MN

Whenever I had to shutdown in the Twin Cities metro area I could always find a parking spot at that truck stop-even in the back lot(and back then about 3-4 years ago that part was free)and the restaurant always served excellent fish sandwiches PIPING HOT! Then the previous owners sold the truck stop to the current owner and the place went downhill ever since! The whole lot is paid parking ($15 dollars-if you can even find a spot) and the last time I drove by there the restaurant was shut down and even with the paid parking the lot was all but taken over by local drivers. Needless to say, I don’t go there anymore-thank goodness there’s a safe haven I can park at in Newport. I don’t even bother with the Pilot in Inver Grove Heights or the T/A in Rogers because I already know how the script goes with those places!

 

Stayed there one time and never will again, western express backed into the side of my trailer there. The spots are angled so it's easier to back in, but he came in the wrong way. So now he's trying to back into the last of 8 parking spots at 145 degree angle. I saw him trying it and before I could get my pants on...bang. Managed to get it on video though lol

 

Small Pilot lots like that I don’t even bother with,just on general principle.

 

Was your experience there similar to mine?

 

During the holidays, I bought the paid parking at the Newburgh, NY Pilot location. If anyone saw a big motorhome with green / red color changing lights around the windshield, that was me!

Anyway, I had some parts to fetch from a hydraulic shop right near that Mahwah location.... I had previously looked at that one via Google Earth and decided it was too small. I drove past in the 4-wheeler and decided I wouldn't even take a CAR in there! That place is a postage stamp! Getting in and out onto NJ's surface-street-that-wants-to-be-a-highway..... That's just asking for a wreck with a big vehicle. What a terrible location.

 

Yeah...that one, the one in Port Jervis (which is actually WORSE), the one at exit 12 going up I-78 (I can't even remember the name, but its the one you have to go like two or three miles up the road to turn around to even get back to), that little half-a-Pilot in Troutdale VA, up outside Roanoke on US-11 (that once had a far larger TA across the street), and that half-an-excuse of a Pilot in Cambridge OH at the junction of 70 & 77 are all definite strikes on the no-go list for me.

 

Port Jervis is definitely worse lol when I first started running across 84 I planned my trip specifically to end at that Pilot (not knowing how tiny it was) I got there and was dumbfounded, no parking at all. Why even advertise as a truck stop???

 

Man, that sucks. Another of the dwindling number of great truckstops bites the dust.