Truckers Fuel Popularity of Trading Stamps : Commerce: Sperry & Hutchinson Co. is now relying on truckers to save the collectibles and redeem them for cash and goods.

At the Dixie Boy Truck Stop, a scruffy namesake in blue denims and cowboy boots snuffs out his cigarette and takes a last gulp of coffee. He fuels up his 18-wheeler and pays the clerk on his way back out to that endless black ribbon.

“Don’t forget your stamps,” the smiling clerk says, unfurling a seemingly endless green ribbon of trading stamps.

“I don’t collect them myself-- uh, I give them to my mom,” explains Jim Murphy, an Edgewater, Fla.-based long hauler. “She’s the one who collects them.”

Clerk Robin Barnes had heard that line before. “Don’t let them fool you. These truck drivers will fight you for them,” she says.

Move over homemakers. The 99-year-old Sperry & Hutchinson Co., stung by the loss of much of its supermarket business over the last decade, is relying on truckers in big rigs to dutifully collect stamps and redeem them for cash and merchandise.

Now, drivers of 18-wheelers constitute about 15 percent of the company’s business. And of the approximately 2,000 businesses across the country that give stamps, about 300 of them are truck stops.

Florida, for example, had been one of S&H;’s top states until the large Publix supermarket chain dropped the stamps in 1986 in favor of coupons and other less expensive promotions. The stamps couldn’t be found again in the state until they resurfaced earlier this year at five truck stops.

“Truckers are a natural fit because they buy a lot of fuel,” said Dixie Boy manager Rex Sharp. “Most of them big rigs on the road take 175 or 200 gallons with every fill-up; they can fill those books a lot quicker than you can buying a tank of gas for your car.”

The basic rate for truckers is two stamps for every gallon of diesel, and most truck stops offer double stamps for big fill-ups. Buy 100 gallons of diesel, get 400 stamps. Buy more than 175 gallons, you get triple stamps, giving you more than 1,000.

It takes 1,200 stamps to fill a book and 30 to 40 books to buy a small television set or CB radio. Or they can trade the stamps for money--$1.80 a book--or use them toward purchases at the truck stops.

“This is a way to give them something back,” Sharp said. “This is like a kickback for them because, for most of them, the company’s paying for the fuel.”

Sharp said the stamp promotion has increased the price of his diesel about a half-cent a gallon, but has also boosted repeat customers and his fuel flow by several thousand gallons a week.

“It’s like frequent flier miles,” said Luke Dinsdale, a national S&H; sales manager. “Truckers can get seven or eight books a trip. They can save them up and at the end of the year buy a nice gift. It’s a perk.”

S&H; has long been entrenched as a part of Americana. Generations of housewives and grandmothers saved stamp books in shoe boxes and perused the catalogue for electric can openers, folding tables and cribs.

That bears little resemblance to the scene at the Dixie Boy Truckstop off busy Interstate 4. The smell of diesel fills the air along with the piercing squeal of brakes.

Inside, bleary-eyed long haulers eat eggs and grits at a diner. A few feet away, on the magazine rack next to Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, are free copies of a special S&H; catalogue with the picture of a big rig on the cover.

“Truckers! Time To Hit The Road With S&H;,” it reads.

It’s a normal S&H; catalogue with additional items geared to truckers: long-haul cowboy boots (36 books), a quartz pocket watch with etched truck design (49 books), wood-beaded seat cushion (seven books), and a 40-channel CB radio (29 books). Some truck stops even have small displays of items and customer service counters to help process orders.

“I figure I’ve got to stop here and get fuel anyway, I might as well try to get some personal compensation out of it,” said Tampa-based trucker Jerome Griffin. “I just get them and throw them in the glove box. Sooner or later, me and my grandson will get to it. I’ll let him do the licking and I’ll do the pasting.”

Nurturing a steady trucker business is important for the New York-based S&H; company that is but a shadow of its former self.

It peaked in 1969 with $369 million in sales and more than 100,000 stores and businesses that gave stamps. By 1987, the company was down to 7,500 participating stores with sales of about $200 million.

While truckers are now a key part of today’s S&H;, most of them are well aware that collecting trading stamps doesn’t always fit in with their tough, independent image.

“My wife does it. She takes care of it. I’m too busy for it myself,” said Jack Pogue of Salina, Kan., who wore an American eagle T-shirt under his blue overalls.

And would he admit it if he licked and pasted stamps?

“Probably not.”