What is being billed as perhaps one of the largest truck and travel plazas in the state of Oklahoma could become an economic savior for one northwest Oklahoma town. The Gore Truck and Travel Plaza under construction at the junction of highways 270 and 183 just northwest of the town of Seiling is expected to be open for business by August. And it promises not to be just any truck stop.
Not only will it feature dozens of spaces for big-rig parking but the 20,000 square foot plaza will feature a 4,500 square foot in-door Sonic restaurant capable of seating 77 indoor not to mention the 16 out-door slots for pull-up motorists. Then there is the day-care center being built for the 130 people who will be hired to run the plaza.
“What we ended up with was a 20,000 square-foot facility, probably one of the larger in the area in all of Oklahoma,” said Jeremy Hammons, Director of Operations for the Gore Travel Plaza.
The Gore family name and its tie to energy are well known in Seiling where the family has run a Phillips 66 service station for nearly 76 years on main street. Alton Gore’s son Gary, an engineer is President and CEO of Gore Nitrogen Services, a firm started in 2001 in Liberal, Kansas. It expanded operations to Seiling where the firm that specializes in nitrogen pumping and fracking has about 80 employees. It was Gary and brother Tony Gore and their wives who came up with an idea for a truck plaza that they initially wanted to serve their own trucking fleet.
“They brainstormed on this thing two or three years before they ever pulled the trigger,” said Hammons in an interview with OK Energy Today. “They’d have family meetings and talk about it and they’d say ‘ooh, this is a great idea and this is an awesome idea and this is great for our community’ and it just built and built and built.”
With a wife who wanted to return to her hometown, Hammons and family moved to Seiling more than a year ago, after spending 17 years in the steakhouse business including 13 years as a Regional Vice President with Santa Fe Cattle Company, a few years as an owner operator of a Texas Road House and a year with CISCO Foods. He became friends with Gore who hired him to become director of the travel plaza project.
“Their initial idea was to make a larger-sized idea for diesel for their trucks, but it took off and we decided this area needed more and more food and more operations,” continued Hammons. He explained the south side of the travel plaza will include the Sonic restaurant which will have 77-indoor seats, a patio area for out-door eating plus 16 bays for motorists who don’t want to leave their vehicles.
“I feel like it’ll be the nicest Sonic in the United States,” said Hammons. “We have every new piece of equipment that Sonic has available for us. I’m really excited about the Sonic side.”
The convenience store will feature Chance Chicken then the north side of the plaza has its own unique offering, thanks to the wives of the Gore owners. What they came up with is a 3,000 square foot bistro named Delizioso’s. It will feature Italian specialty coffees, home-made pizza, frozen yogurts and the capacity to seat 100 customers. The plaza will also feature a trucker’s lounge as well as showers and a 7-day-a-week barbershop. The old-fashioned kind with the barber’s pole outside.
Hammons and the developers know Seiling will not be capable for filling the number of employees needed to run the operation. They expect to recruit workers from area towns and to attract them, the Gores are building an 11,000 square-foot daycare center next to the travel plaza. It will be capable of handling up to 80 children and will hire 25 to 30 employees. Depending on how many children of employees are handled there, the center could eventually be opened to the public.
“It’s really a great deal for the community,” explained Hammons who said the town of Seiling got behind the project knowing it could be an economic boon.
“We had the town of Seiling behind it and they annexed the land so they would get the tax dollars.”
Why Seiling? Why in what some might consider a remote site in northwest Oklahoma nearly 30 miles from Woodward?
“That intersection of 183 and 270 is one of the busiest oilfield and farming track intersections in the state of Oklahoma,” said Hammons. Considering that some of the hottest drilling sites are nearby in the STACK and SCOOP plays, it means oilfield trucks and equipment are moving up and down the highways including 183 which is also known as the Northwest Passage. Seiling sits squarely between Watonga to the southeast and Woodward to the northwest.
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