The Giant Is King of the Road : Bountiful Meals, State-of-the-Art Amenities and VIP Service Make This a Truckers’ Country Club

Out on the lonesome highway, where a grueling 10-hour shift behind the wheel of an 40-ton semi can give even a veteran driver a case of white-line fever, everyone knows about The Giant.

It’s a vision of Trucker Heaven, an inviting roadside oasis where a driver can pull in, shower away the road grime and order up a pot of coffee with a one-pound slice of fresh apple pie on the side.

The Ritz it isn’t, but the world’s largest truck stop has won the hearts and minds of America’s truckers with bountiful home-style cooking and an array of state-of-the-art conveniences.

“This is a special place,” says Henry Carter, a soft-voiced Commerce City, Colo., truck driver who makes a point of stopping by at least once a month on his trips to Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Carter, working his way through a plate of chicken-fried steak and biscuits, pronounces the food “terrific” and says he has been thinking about renting a post office box.

Yes indeed, The Giant, a.k.a. the Giant Travel Center, has its own full-service post office (ZIP Code 87347).

It also boasts a 30-seat movie theater, a laundry, two convenience stores, a restaurant, a fast-food counter, a Western wear store, a store that sells only boots, a video arcade, a fully staffed truck service center and a drive-through lane for washing 18-wheelers.

The 38,000-square-foot main building with an atrium-like central mall sits on 35 acres of scenic desert real estate at Exit 39 on Interstate 40, about 17 miles east of Gallup, N.M. The truck stop employs 300 people and has 36 fueling bays.

By comparison, the Unocal 76 truck stop in Ontario sits on 33 acres, has 10 fueling bays and 145 employees.

The Giant is big, all right.

With word of The Giant filtering up and down the road over CB radios, truckers sometimes venture 200 or 300 miles out of their way to schedule an extended stopover, according to food service manager Ed Healy.

Those who regularly drive round-trip between Los Angeles and points east sometimes visit twice a week. For drivers living on the road for weeks on end and bunking in the sleeper compartments of their cabs, The Giant--14 hours east of Los Angeles--offers a little upscale R&R.;

“This is like a country club for truck drivers,” Healy says. “They’re really pampered.”

The VIP treatment starts the minute a truck pulls into one of canopied fueling bays.

As special high-speed nozzles pump the diesel, a team of workers swarms over the cab, cleaning windows and headlights and checking fluids. The service is provided at self-serve prices.

Next, a driver can pull into one of more than 300 oversize parking spaces and, if the weather is bad, get a lift to the main building in the parking lot security van. If personal hygiene is in order, 26 freshly sanitized showers stand ready, furnished with thick towels and built-in blow dryers.

Then it’s on to the 275-seat Baker’s Hearth restaurant, where the booths in the truckers-only section are equipped with scratch pads, pencils and credit card-operated telephones for checking in with dispatchers or calling home.

After eating, a driver with time to kill can visit the travel center’s exclusive Professional Drivers wing to send a fax, dispatch an air express package or rent a video (many semis’ sleeper compartments are equipped with VCRs and other amenities).

It is here that they check the lighted map that displays road and weather conditions on every interstate between Los Angeles and Dallas, get their boots shined or catch up on their favorite soap operas.

“What they need and want is what we try to provide,” Healy says. The travel center may start Sunday morning religious services and offer dry-cleaning in addition to regular laundry.

The heart of the operation is the restaurant, which last year was voted by truckers the No. 1 eatery of its type in the nation. The survey by the American Beef Council was published in the November issue of Hospitality Magazine.

The menu, overseen by a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America, ranges from bacon and eggs to prime rib and includes Mexican and fish dishes. Buffets and salad bars with low-fat, low-sodium offerings are a recent innovation.

Breads, cakes and pastries are baked daily on the premises, meat is butchered and smoked in the kitchen and virtually all the meals use fresh ingredients.

Truckers also can’t quibble with the enormous servings offered at a reasonable price. For example, the fresh home-made pies are baked in 10-inch pie tins that are not only bigger but deeper than the usual 9-inch shallow tins, Healy says.

“One piece of pie is a meal in itself,” he says. The peach, cherry and apple pies also are sold, boxed to go, for $7.95.

Dallas-based driver Roger Moore, making short work of a Mexican plate, says it rivals the food in his favorite restaurant back home.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories about the place from people running coast to coast,” he says. “This is a nice change. The waitress is very polite. When the food came out, it looked good on the plate.”

Pushing his plate away, Moore is a satisfied man.

“For the price,” he says, “they give you a lot.”

The Giant never forgets that truckers are its raison d’etre.

Drivers are served free barbecue during the Trucker Appreciation Days weekend in the summer, and they eat free at Christmas and Thanksgiving. The Giant really comes alive on weekends, when truckers who aren’t able to make deliveries until Monday morning pull in for an extended stay. The parking lot sometimes gets so full that truckers park across the highway at a state-maintained rest area.

Although some of the travel center’s amenities are limited to truckers, many of the 4,700 daily visitors are transportation civilians, families navigating the interstate in sedans and hatchbacks or residents from the surrounding area.

In fact, since it was built in 1987 next to a Giant Industries Inc. petroleum refinery, the travel center has become a community center of sorts, Healy says. People drive in for holiday meals and the occasional entertainment program, including an annual floor show by the L.A. Raiders cheerleaders and a Valentine’s Day party featuring a mariachi band.

The travel center--one of 2,500 located on interstates and major U.S. highways--is among the top five employers in economically depressed McKinley County, Healy says. Because it is close to the Navajo Reservation, most of the staff is Navajo, he says, although workers also come from Zuni, Hopi and other tribes.

The Indian touch is felt in the restaurant, where patrons can order a Navajo taco. It’s a local dish consisting of three pounds of ground beef, lettuce, beans and cheese heaped on a traditional Navajo pastry known as fry bread.

“If they eat the whole thing, they get dessert free,” Healy comments.

Two Navajo women prepare the fry bread in the kitchen, each according to her own secret recipe, Healy says.

The Giant is a far cry from the way most people think of truck stops. Healy says that reflects the fact that the rough-edged “outlaw” trucker popularized in movies and country-Western songs is mostly a myth. And you’ll find no prostitutes or drug dealers skulking about the parking lot, he says.

The traditionally male-dominated business of truck driving is changing as women and truck-driving couples enter the field, he says.

Sitting alone in the drivers-only section of Baker’s Hearth, Roger Moore embodies the New Trucker.

A former medical laboratory technician, Moore says he started driving trucks for a change of pace and got hooked.

“Like the old song says, diesel gets in your blood,” he says.

But Moore’s over-the-road days may be numbered. His fiance is in driving school, he explains. He plans to take time off to go to college after they marry and leave the truck driving to her.