Known for living up to its motto “Clean Places, Friendly Faces”, Love’s is one of the premier travel stops in the United States. Luv’s has approximately 600 locations spread across 42 states, which is a testament to the success of the brand. However, Love’s history and its extensive accomplishments are not unlike those of the country’s other major gas station chains. Love’s was far from the country’s first true gas station, but its approach was unique, and the business is notable today for these differences.
Originally known as Muskrat Corporation, the company we now know as Love’s was founded in Oklahoma in 1964 when Tom and Judy Love set up shop outside an abandoned gas station northwest of Oklahoma City. However, the pair were not satisfied with simply selling fuel, and by the 1970s, they upgraded their operations to serve customers beyond the pump. He began offering groceries and other goods at the station and called the new and improved location a country store. Now, whenever you stop to fuel up on a road trip and run inside to buy a bag of taquitos or candy, remember that you have love to thank for such easy access to all your favorite non-fuel gas station products.
However, the changes Love made to the gas station concept were not limited to selling food. Over the past 60 years, the company has continued to pursue the idea of a gas station that does more. This means delving into repairs, fleet management and even alternative fuel sources. All the while, Love’s has remained a family-owned business and is still run by Tom and Judy Love’s children today.
The next 60 years of the Love brand
It wasn’t until 1981 that Love opened the first location of what would one day become an elaborate network of tour stops. Located along I-40 in Amarillo, Texas, this location first wanted to serve truck drivers, providing them with a friendly and pleasant place to refuel themselves and their trucks on the road. As Love’s tours expanded across the country, locations began to add more and more amenities, such as maintenance bays and even hot showers. Love’s Truck Care now boasts more than 1,300 maintenance bays nationwide and offers tire care, roadside assistance and other maintenance services.
Then, in the ’90s, Love’s Alternative Energy opened its doors. With a mission to make transportation more sustainable, this subgroup of the Love brand focuses on supplying alternative fuels to Love’s various locations. It supplies renewable natural gas and compressed natural gas on a large scale, but it also maintains hydrogen fueling stations and electric vehicle charging stations. Love’s Alternative Energy also provides solutions for on-site power generation and storage as well as solar installations.
Family owned fuel is hard to find
The fact that Love’s has remained a family-owned business for over 60 years now makes it an oddity among gas station and travel stop brands in the United States (and most of the world for that matter). You could be forgiven for looking at the prevalence of Love’s stations across the country and assuming it’s part of a huge conglomerate or multinational corporation. After all, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, 7-Eleven, Chevron, Flying J, and TravelCenters of America are all massive publicly traded corporations or their subsidiaries.
Although founders Tom and Judy Love have now passed away, the family-owned company’s position does not appear to be in imminent danger. His sons Greg and Frank Love are CEO and co-CEO, respectively, and his daughter Jenny Love Mayer is the company’s chief culture officer and executive vice president. The family is committed to implementing its predecessors’ vision for a company that delivers innovation and service. Gas prices aren’t going to go down anytime soon, and Love’s doesn’t have much say in the matter, but at least it eases my poor wallet’s worries that filling up at Love’s means supporting a family-owned company in an industry full of corporate giants.
