The Wilmoth family contracts out its Travel America operation

By Oliver

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The Wilmoth family contracts out its Travel America operation

The Mount Vernon Ozarks Travel Center in Mt. Vernon and the Travel America truck stop in Strafford, both owned by Wilmoth Companies, are currently under new management.

Wilmoth Companies, based in Mt. Vernon, recently leased the truck stops to LV Petroleum, the nation’s largest Travel Centers of America franchise, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

LV Petroleum took over operations at both locations on Tuesday, Jan. 14, the day the lease went into effect, and will operate the truck stops until December 31, 2030; LV Petroleum will then have the option to renew the lease.

Brent Wilmoth, president of Wilmoth Companies, stated that the move will benefit both Wilmoth Companies and LV Petroleum.

“It’s going to allow LV Petroleum to continue to grow their Travel Centers of America franchise location,” he told me, “and it’s going to allow us to be able again to focus on other areas that we can potentially develop and move forward with on our side.”

Wilmoth stated that customers should notice little difference in the travel center’s operations.
“We really haven’t seen a lot of changes; it’s been business as usual, basically,” he told me. “They’ll carry on with business as usual, and we have a strategic partnership with them.”

Once we signed these leases, we formed a partnership and alliance with LV to assist them in any way possible so that they could continue to provide the same high level of service to America’s highway heroes, the drivers.”

While LV Petroleum operates both TA truck stops, Wilmoth stated that his family will continue to operate the original Travel America truck stop in Mt. Vernon, which is on the Loop, under a different name.

“We’re going to continue to operate this, but it’s going to be operated as a location called 46 Travel Center,” according to him. “(It’s) going to be an independent travel center.”

For the time being, Wilmoth and his family intend to keep their other business plans under wraps.
“At the moment, we don’t want to say anything,” he said, “but we have other opportunities that we’re going to pursue.

So, that’s going to be our primary focus: expanding our operations in a slightly different direction than we did with the retail Travel Center locations.”

Wilmoth also mentioned that the Mt. Vernon location was recently named one of the top-rated truck stops in the country.

“Ozark’s Travel Center TA location (in) Mt. Vernon was just listed as one of the top 15 (truck stop) locations in America, so it’s something good for Mt. Vernon.”

One change that has occurred at the Mt. Vernon truck stop is the gas supplier. When LV Petroleum took over the Ozark Travel Center, they switched suppliers from Phillips 66 to Gulf, which Wilmoth said is consistent with many of their other TA locations.

“They just made the decision that they wanted to change their branding options,” he told me. “And they are one of the largest Gulf jobbers in the United States, so they decided to switch and rebrand it as Gulf. So, that was LV Petroleum’s decision.

Wilmoth added that Phillips 66 would continue to supply gas at their original truck stop.

“We have retained the Conoco Phillips brand at the old truck stop,” he told me.

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