This year, the Iowa 80 truck stop located in Walcott, Iowa, is marking the company’s 60 year anniversary of operations.
The Iowa 80 is proud to have never shut their doors since the first day that they opened in 1964. “There are no keys to the doors, as none have ever been needed,” the company said.
“It is really amazing to have reached this milestone,” says Delia Moon Meier, Senior Vice President. “We are so fortunate to have such wonderful, dedicated employees and loyal customers.”
As part of the 60 year anniversary, Iowa 80 looked back on how the truck stop was founded back in 1964:
“The Iowa 80 Truckstop began as a small building with 6 diesel pumps and a 50-seat restaurant on what would become Exit 284. Bill Moon located the spot for Standard Oil before the interstate was completed. They built and opened the truck stop with Bill taking over management a year later, in 1965. Years passed, Interstate 80 was completed and hundreds, then thousands of truckers and travelers stopped by Iowa 80 to fuel, grab a bite to eat and head on down the road. In 1984, Standard Oil (now Amoco) decided to sell the facility. Bill Moon, who had been managing the place for nearly 20 years, jumped at the chance. He and his wife Carolyn, leveraged everything they had, including borrowing money from friends, to purchase Iowa 80.
Once the Moon Family owned Iowa 80, they could expand the building and add services as needed. Today, after 32 expansions and remodels, Iowa 80 is overseen by the second generation of the Moon Family, who have dedicated their lives to providing a home away from home for the thousands of people who visit Iowa 80 each day. The Iowa 80 Truckstop includes a gift store, the Super Truck Showroom, a dentist, a barber shop, a chiropractor, a workout room, laundry facilities, a 60-seat movie theatre, a trucker’s TV lounge, 24 private showers, many restaurant options including the Iowa 80 Kitchen, Wendy’s, Dairy Queen, Orange Julius, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Einstein Bagels and Caribou Coffee, Blimpie and Chester’s Chicken; a convenience store, a custom embroidery and vinyl shop, 42 BP branded gas and diesel fueling positions at the main building, 34 high-speed diesel pumps for truckers at the fuel center, a 7-bay truck service center, a 3-bay Truckomat truck wash, a CAT Scale, a Dogomat Pet Wash, and the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum.
Bill was also an avid collector of antique trucks. He purchased his first antique truck, a 1919 International, from a scrap yard down by the Mississippi River in the early 70’s, after he overheard a driver lamenting about a scrap yard preparing to crush some old trucks. The driver believed old trucks should be preserved, and so did Bill Moon. Bill then made it his mission to purchase a wide variety of old trucks with the hope that he could open an antique truck museum someday and share the history of trucking in America with the world. The Iowa 80 Trucking Museum was opened in 2008 in his memory, and now proudly features over 100 antique trucks, vintage signs, gas pumps, antique toy trucks and other trucking memorabilia. The Museum is free to the public.“
Today, Iowa 80 offers 900 truck parking spaces and serves about 5000 customers per day. The truck stop employs about 500 workers.