TA to buy Russell's Truck & Travel Center

ENDEE — TravelCenters of America, the largest publicly traded truck stop company in the United States, soon will buy the family-owned Russell’s Truck & Travel Center along Interstate 40, though it will keep the Russell’s name for a few years.

Mark Russell, director of operations for Russell’s, said in a phone interview last week the deal officially will close on Oct. 11. He declined to disclose the purchase price.

Russell’s sold its other travel center near Springer to TA in May, Russell said.

Both were founded by Emory and Barbara Russell, who first opened a grocery store in Cimarron in 1971 and branched out their businesses from there.

Mark Russell said TA has agreed to keep the Russell’s name at Endee for three years.

“They said they want to kind of keep things the way they are,” he said. “They want to keep the restaurant running. They want to keep the same menus. They want to keep the same recipes.”

That includes the free classic-car and old-time memorabilia museum, which Russell said will stick around for five years due to an unusual arrangement with TA.

“We’re actually leasing the museum from them,” he said. “My mom and dad just wanted to keep the museum and keep people being able to look at the cars and stuff.”

Since the Endee Russell’s opened in 2010, its museum has collected donations from visitors and distributed them to charities that help feed poor people, including Ministry of Hope in Tucumcari.

Over the years, donations have totaled more than $465,000.

“My mom was real adamant about wanting to keep that going,” Russell said.

Russell’s at Endee also houses a 1950s-style diner, a Subway franchise, a gift shop and a chapel, along with a nearby a tire shop.

Russell’s opened over the ruins of the closed Longhorn II restaurant along I-40 and an alignment of Route 66 a few miles west of the Texas border.

Noting the passage of time, Mark Russell said he and his family felt they needed to sell their truck stops.

“My mom and dad are getting a lot older,” he said. “My dad’s 86 years old. And all my brothers are all retired. I live in Amarillo, and I’m out here six days a week. I just need to be home. It’s just kind of time. Basically, everybody’s getting older, and you want to have some more time for yourselves.”

Mark Russell said the truck stop employs 68 people. He said TA has told him it wants to keep all those workers after the change in ownership.

He said in the weeks before Russell’s opened in 2010, his family admitted to having some worries about attracting good employees because of the truck stop’s remote location.

Those concerns turned out to be unfounded.

“All the employees that we have, they’re just wonderful,” Russell said. “We’ve been blessed. We couldn’t have gotten better employees.”

He said he and the employees at Russell’s felt welcomed almost immediately after it opened 13 years ago.

“We we had a dedication when we opened, and we invited all the community,” he said. “I’ve been at a lot of places where it takes months, if not years to be welcomed. Shoot, that night, we felt like we were part of the community.”

Gilbert Romero, a district manager for TA, said in a phone interview the corporation still plans to open a franchise on South First Street in Tucumcari just off I-40.

Romero said TA plans to begin construction there in the first quarter of 2024.

Ohio-based TravelCenters of America, founded in 1972, operates more than 270 locations in the U.S., including one in Santa Rosa, and totals more than 20,000 employees.