My Diary

[Rawlco]

I see Terry's point. I have been at the same decision myself before. You are really tight on time, and fuel. You pull into the truckstop on a saturday afternoon and the fuel island is jammed full. By the time you would have finished fueling you would have lost an hour out of your 34, so you just park because you really need that hour. You will be leaving in the wee hours of the next day and fueling then will be simple.

Then after you park you find out that this is one of those slummy truckstops, and when you check back to this forum after showering people scare you with the "murder capital" information, but it is past your 14 hours now, and it is late so probably all of the parking spots at the J are full, so spending the entire 34 here is your best bet, besides which if you had an accident or something that needed to be logged you would be screwed, so just wait it out, and make a better choice next time.

The other thing is that Flying J's are not on the TMC fuel network, so we don't have any free showers there. TMC will reimburse for any shower receipts turned in, but I don't usually bother with that.

I always try to fuel at one Petro and one TA during the week if I can, that gives me a choice of places to take a 34. I plan my weekend runs carefully and try to spend the weekend somewhere decent, but sometimes that just doesn't work out. I actually prefer to spend my 34's at a flying J/country market buffet, but I don't go out of my way to get to them.