On the western edge of Lincoln is a delightful little place to stop if you want to avoid the hustle and bustle of Lincoln. Shoemaker's Truck Stop!
Shoemaker’s. By Brian Reetz
As I sat with my fresh cup of coffee in one of the back booths, this large, yet cozy place swelled with activity. Waitresses were hopping from one table to another. Truckers were coming in off the interstate or dragging themselves out of their cab for their morning pick me up. Others including farmers, travelers and locals were just finishing up their breakfast and heading back out onto the roads. But not far away from me was a table that fluctuated in numbers celebrating a gentlemen’s 83rd birthday and I couldn’t help but be intrigued. Conversations were varied from talk of skin cancer to sharing their grandchildren’s prom photos. “How have you been?” one man said. “Still kicking,” was the reply. “How do you want your eggs,” the waitress asked calling most everyone by their first name. “We are going to split a western omelet,” another person added addressing the waitress by her first name as well.
Such is life at a Lincoln landmark -- Shoemaker’s. Third-generation truck stop owner Dave Shoemaker had never thought of it that way before. “My wife said, ‘what is it like being a landmark?’” Dave said. “You hear things on the radio like there is a bad accident out on the interstate by Shoemaker’s. And then people know where that is. It’s weird to be here that long and in the community.”
The Shoemaker family, including grandpa, Harley C., and his three sons, got into the truck stop business for the first time back in 1951 in California. They moved to the Golden State from Illinois where the family originally owned a farm and implement business. That first truck stop, located on Route 101, had three pumps. Dave’s dad, Harley G., decided a few years later to move his family to Gallup, New Mexico, where they ran a truck stop located on Route 66. But when the interstate system went around both of the family businesses, the entire group decided to look elsewhere to set up shop.
“We looked at this place (the current site of Shoemaker’s) and the interstate wasn’t even finished then,” the 54-year-old said. “It went to Grand Island and then picked up again somewhere in Wyoming. Being from California, we knew what the traffic from the interstate would do. They looked at a couple of other places but this looked like for the dollar more of a promising place.”
So in 1967, they made the move to the two-bay, 60-seat restaurant with no real store to speak of – just three glass cases of merchandise. They fixed some tires and changed some oil but that was about it. Oh, how the times have changed. They now employ 85 people with 11 fuel islands and a 200-seat restaurant.
So if you have ever just stopped to get gas for your vehicle at Shoemaker’s you are missing out on so much more.
First, the restaurant. With Kuhl’s recently closing downtown, Dave believes that the restaurant has to be one of oldest in town as they have been doing business with Pegler-Sysco for more than 40 years. With tasty omelets and delicious thick-sliced bacon, you won’t leave hungry but Dave added that the food is secondary to the talk that takes place.
“My favorite thing to eat here is the Pork Tenderloin,” Dave said, who eats at the restaurant nearly every day. “We hand bread our own. It’s outstanding. The hamburgers are great. I love the breakfast. We don’t do a lot of pre-prepared food. We still cook our own roasts and make our own pies from scratch.
“Do you remember Alice’s Restaurant and the bakery? When they quit, we hired their baker. That was not a good deal,” he joked as he had the distinct pleasure of tasting different kinds of pies and cookies. “My waist size just blew up.”
You would also miss the store that carries toys, travel items, clothing lines, electronics, scanners, XM radios and much more. “The owner-operator is kind of going away,” Dave added. “Now he is driving for a company. Now many of them since they live in the truck they have a plasma tv, a nice stereo, cds and dvds and 75 percent have laptops and printers. It turns them into mobile homes.”
Don’t forget about checking out the museum. It’s a collection of pumps and globes from truck stops of the past. The first pump was from Midwest Pump, a Clockface Tokheim, that they bought in 1984. “We had it redone and once we put it up, it all just blew up,” Dave said. “We had customers bringing stuff in. They were dragging stuff out of their sleepers and they had signs that asked, what will you give me for this? Then my dad would go on vacation and you never knew what he would bring back.”
The museum became a big part of their expansion of the restaurant. Dave and his father couldn’t decide which they wanted to expand but something happened one day that made up their minds for them. “It was April Fools’ Day,” Dave recalled. “We had a pretty good snowstorm and we had been pushing snow all day. Previously we had been discussing building on and if we were going to do it to the east or to the south. It had been a long and hectic day with hundreds of trucks parked everywhere and a mess. We were sitting in my office and Jeff, the restaurant manager, came over and said that there was a truck in the restaurant. I thought, sure a truck in the restaurant. Then he got a little more excited and said, ‘Dave, there really is a truck in the restaurant.’ I was like how is that. He said he rolled down the hill and he is in the restaurant now. The front end of the truck was sticking into that area. People wanted to sit in the booth right next to where the truck came in with the walls crumbling down and the glass broke. My dad wanted to go to the east and I wanted to go to the south and I looked at him and said, I guess you won. Before that day was over, he had envisioned it all adding, ‘We started to be an old gas station. Let’s finish it.’ Most old gas stations looked just like it with the two pillars out front and the two pumps in between.”
Dave, the husband of a writer and teacher as well as the father of a son and a daughter, just likes each and every aspect of the Shoemaker experience. “I like that there is never a dull moment,” Dave said, adding that with the bustle of activity items such as door handles and hinges don’t get old around Shoemaker’s, they wear out, even those with lifetime warranties. “I might be driving to work and think. What am I going to do today? That answer gets filled up pretty much right away. You never know what direction you may end up going. I was out fertilizing the yard this morning. You get out and you see your customers. I enjoy meeting the people. They see that we aren’t the corporate people. We do a lot of stuff on our own. We are a hands on operation. That is the way that my dad taught me.”
And a recent change in the business has given him a bolt of energy as well. They recently joined a group of truck stops called AMBEST. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to us as a truck stop,” Dave said. “It’s like a co-op. I think there are 85 truck stops through the United States and we tie together like a chain. I’m the chairman of the board for the organization. I’m excited about it. Trying to survive as an independent today is tough. The first couple of months we joined it jumped us about 100,000 gallons a month in fuel. That is huge,” adding that Shoemaker’s is a small stop selling a little over 500,000 gallons of fuel a month, compared to many Flying Js that will sell a million gallons. “When you join something like that, not only does it invigorate your business, it also invigorated me. When I get excited, it is easier to excite everyone else.”
But most importantly, you would miss all of the talk of the day and the coffee. Did I mention that my cup was less than half full when the waitress came over and refilled it? Not just once either but time and time again. But even the customers must move on with their day as one person from the birthday celebration said when he was departing, “It’s a tradition. We’ve got to go because we’ve got things to do.”
It’s that laidback atmosphere that Dave hopes everyone enjoys when they spend some time at Shoemaker’s. “They look for a home away from home,” Dave said of the drivers. “I want people to walk out of here with a smile on their face. That they felt like they got a good deal for their money -- a good plate of food or good service. You treat people the way that you would like to be treated. My dad gave me the opportunity of a lifetime!”
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