Love’s to expand travel stops, Truck Care shops, and mobile maintenance service
In 2023, Love’s plans on opening 25 new travel stops and 15 Love’s Truck Care and Speedco locations. In total, the growing Oklahoma City-based company will add 75 new service bay and increase its mobile maintenance fleet by 75 vehicles, which will not only provide emergency roadside assistance, but perform light maintenance for fleets onsite at their facilities.
To get technicians to populate the new bays and maintenance trucks, Love’s is also doubling its Truck Care Academies from two to four.
“We have about 1,800 mechanics today, and we're going to continue to grow that to support this growth business,” Love’s President Shane Wharton said of academy expansion. “Our goal is that they grow their career with loves, and not somewhere else, and that we have a lot of opportunity to allow them to do that.
Overall the company expects to grow its employee base by 5% to 42,000 in 2023.
The company currently has 1,700 bays and 1,000 maintenance trucks, according to Wharton, so that means adding the total number of bays by 4.4% and mobile maintenance trucks by 7.5%.
The mobile side provides light maintenance, such as oil, brake and tire work, along with preventive maintenance.
“We won't do engine overhauls or get into an engine, but all of the other things, wheel seals and bearings and all of those sort of things, we can do,” Wharton explained.
As fleets find themselves with less time or labor to do their light maintenance work, Love’s is ready to step up with specific technicians heading out to their terminals and yards.
“Depending on how much the business grows, we may have to dedicate trucks to particular areas, depending on the level of business,” Wharton noted.
The company also announced existing stores will be remodeled over the next “several” years, as well as updates within Love’s family of companies.
Musket, which supplies ethanol and diesel exhaust fluid, will continue to partner with Circle K, and add facilities.
“We're one of the largest producers of DEF, in the country. continue to expand our supply capacity and capabilities pretty aggressively into 2023
Trillium broke ground on a new renewable diesel facility in Hastings, Nebraska.
“We did that through a [joint venture] with Cargill and that'll be producing diesel via renderings from meat processing plants,” Wharton said. This will open in 2024, because as he pointed out, it’s “essentially building a refinery, so it's a really big project and will take some time.”
Trillium Energy Solutions will also add 80 new electric vehicle charging stations in support of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) plan.
