Y’all Are Crazy, Mercedes Partnering With Buc-ee’s Makes Perfect Sense

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The great thing about being from Texas is that you get to talk about Texas all the time and people have to listen. It’s a rule. I don’t understand it but, as a Texan, I’ve long been the beneficiary of such a policy. And yet, for all the listening about Texas that people from less interesting places like Delaware and Colorado have had the opportunity to do, a lot of y’all still don’t seem to get it.

Case-in-point: Mercedes-Benz’s impending charging network, Mercedes-Benz HPC, made the small announcement that it would be partnering with regional gas station chain/borderline cult Buc-ee’s to install some EV chargers in about 30 locations. This shouldn’t be a big deal except many people seem to be losing their minds about this and, seemingly, all those people seem to be not from Texas.

I don’t mean to be impolite, but being from Texas means that I’m not under any obligation to be  polite, so: y’all are showing your ass a little bit.

First, let’s just clarify exactly what Mercedes announced here so no one gets it twisted:

Mercedes-Benz HPC North America LLC (Mercedes-Benz HPC NA), which is launching a network of premium EV charging stations across North America, announces a new strategic agreement today with Buc-ee’s, operators of the beloved and world-renowned chain of travel centers, marking a significant milestone in the journey to create a national charging network that redefines convenience and quality for drivers across the country. Mercedes-Benz will build charging hubs at most Buc-ee’s existing travel centers, starting with about 30 by the end of 2024.

Mercedes-Benz HPC NA has already begun work on charging hubs at numerous Buc-ee’s locations across the country, with some to be open by the end of this year. This collaboration underscores the commitment of both organizations to provide exceptional value and an unparalleled experience to their customers.

Though primarily a Texas chain, Buc-ee’s is expanding and will likely continue to expand along major travel corridors and therefore a relationship like this makes sense. I don’t feel like I need to explain what Mercedes is to people, since this is a car site, but I’ll attempt to explain Buc-ee’s. [Ed Note: Oh god, a Texan explaining Buc-ee’s. Buckle up. -DT]. 

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Photo: Buc-ee’s Facebook

The first store was opened in Lake Jackson, Texas in 1982 by a guy with the extremely Texan name: Arch Aplin III, aka Arch III. He gave the story a mascot, a beaver, and was committed to making it just a little nicer than your usual grocery store. Here’s a great description of where it started from this Texas Monthly profile:

“I think you’ll see it’s the nicest, prettiest store around. It’s very sharp looking,” Aplin told the Brazosport Facts on the store’s opening day. “I believe everyone who comes in will be in awe over the way it looks.” He made clear his ambitions were bigger than that one location. “If this one goes like we hope it will, you never can tell, we might have a chain of Buc-ee’s.”

If he dreamed that one day his creation might become a Texas icon, a temple of roadside convenience and everything’s-bigger abundance, and that it would even reach a point, in 2019, when it would outgrow Texas, he certainly didn’t share the thought at the time. He was just a kid from Lake Jackson following in his family’s footsteps.

Even Texans with modest ambitions tend to overachieve people, and in the years since Arch III has expanded the concept until he wound up with the world’s largest gas station in Tennessee, which has 130 gas pumps and more than 350 employees.

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Photo: Buc-ee’s Facebook

To call a Buc-ee’s a gas station is to call the Sistine Chapel a church, or the Taj Mahal a gravesite. Your average Buc-ee’s these days is a shopping mall, a restaurant, and as close to a spa as you’ll find on most major highways and interstates. They are enormously popular and I have, I will admit, withheld my micturatin’ for an unhealthy period so that I might spend my nickel at a Buc-Eee’s.

What makes them so beloved? First, they pay their employees above-average wages. The result is you don’t end up with gas station attendants who look as if they’re about to murder you or, perhaps, would be happier if you murdered them. The stores are extremely clean and well-lit and the brand advertises itself as having the nicest restrooms anywhere.

Plus, they have food. A lot of food. And drinks. They have jerky as far as the eyes can see, freshly made BBQ sandwiches, beaver nuggets, candied pecans (a personal favorite), and breakfast tacos. Is this the greatest food you’ve ever had? No. It’s arguable that the BBQ you can get at Buc-ee’s isn’t even the best BBQ you can get from a chain of gas stations in Texas (the best is from a random dude with a smoker and a giant worn Igloo-brand cooler setup in a parking lot of a place called, like, Major Brand Gas, the second best is probably Rudy’s). But it’s food in a safe and friendly place to park your car and get some gas.

This would be approximately the best place to put an electric car charger as, in my experience, the average person intends to spend 5 minutes in a Buc-ee’s and ends up spending approximately an hour and walks out with four pounds of meat, six bags of candy, and an ornamental lawn sign in the shape of a golden retriever that says “HOME IS WHERE THE ARF IS.” That’s plenty of time to charge your Mercedes.

So why are people being dumb about this?

Here’s a comment I saw today from the excellent Odd Lots Discord this afternoon:

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First, rich people go to zoos.

Second, where do you think Mercedes drivers fill up their gas-powered cars? Do you think there’s some secret rich person, fancy place to drop off your GLB for some premium gasoline? Is every Mercedes electric charger supposed to be at, what, the Menil Collection? Get off yer high horse, buddy.

This isn’t isolated, though, look at all these responses to Sawyer Merritt’s tweet about this:

You know what? If you took the average transaction price of every full-sized pickup at Buc-ee’s on a regular day and every Mercedes, my guess is the trucks would be worth more. Just saying!

Guess what: For people who have to travel near a Buc-ee’s it’s a damn circle. You know why? People who buy a Mercedes-Benz EQS also like not using a bathroom where every surface is mysteriously wet. I’m sorry, Ross, that you’re too good for a great gas station. To the Citgo with you!

The greatest irony of these people kvetching (I live in New York now, I can use that word) over this news is that, at least on Twitter, many of them seem to be Tesla stans based on their social media profiles and the fact that they’re following Sawyer. Why is that ironic? Because Bucc-ee’s is already home to what I believe is one of the largest Tesla supercharger stations outside of California.

If it’s good enough for Tesla fans I’m sure it’s good enough for Mercedes owners.

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200 thoughts on “Y’all Are Crazy, Mercedes Partnering With Buc-ee’s Makes Perfect Sense”

  5. I saw an interview with Arch III.
    Interesting to say the least.
    He has been offered buyouts many times, but feels a corporation would cut a nickle here and dime there and ruin what he founded.
    He believes you get the best employees by paying a generous wage.
    And…..the average transaction (not including fuel) is over $58……Which is crazy to me. I stop in for clean bathrooms and a cup of coffee…..maybe a fried apple pie…..when it makes sense and is on the way….that makes my transaction much less than $58….so they are defiantly racking in the $$$

  7. Sometimes I dream of one of the multiverses where architecturally-interesting and clean rest areas with walking paths still exist and are loaded with EV charging stations so people can stop, stretch their legs in nature and find some peace before continuing on their journey.

    Instead I live in the one that has several Texas-sized monuments to capitalism complete with shitty food and cheap tourist doo-dads that people love for some reason.

    1. Gosh, this. All I need at a fuel stop is a place to buy palatable caffeine (and sometimes snacks) and a clean place to poop. I don’t need a mini-Walmart to do that.

    3. I’ve been disappointed by the lack of beaver jokes in Buc-ee’s ads lately. I guess they had to project a squeaky-clean image as they expanded, but that means the billboards have really jumped the shark.

      (Still better than the angry political stuff those Buc-ee’s ads tend to displace, but. But.)

  9. I’m in the transportation industry, so I want to hate them for banning semis. Seriously old school “them truckers is dirty people” crap. But alas, I can’t escape how good the bohemian garlic beef jerky is and the fact they have the best (sorry mom) rice crispy treats ever.

    But yeah, f*** you Buc-ees for hating on professional drivers.

    1. How is this ban enforced? Do they just not have diesel pumps that semis can get to?
      It does seem like they are leaving money on the table as filling both tanks on a truck comes with a big bill.
      I see a lot of drivers in and out of the place I work and >90% of them are great folks.

      1. I don’t know how they enforce someone pulling in and parking, but there are no dedicated diesel pumps and the layout is not truck friendly. Even if you got in, you likely wouldn’t be able to route yourself back out easily if you had a trailer on. On top of that, they put little yard signs by the entrances saying “no trucks.”

        1. They say “No 18-Wheelers”, “No Trucks” would be funny as hell in Texas. I’m with “sentinelTk” that excluding truckers is a bad look and it is one of many reasons I am not a Buc-ee’s fan. Not that truckers would put up with the crowds at Buc-ee’s.

          1. I saw a big poo-pump truck that snuck into the Buc-ee’s lot in New Braunfels once. Hell yeah, fight the power. Doing the Lord’s work by protesting an unjustified ban and pooping in THEIR toilets.

    2. It’s my understanding that Buc-ee’s decided to go the anti-semi route to ensure good flow through their parking lot/pumps and help keep their footprint low. Love’s is great and honestly I prefer one over a Buc-ee’s for the simple fact I can get in, get out, and get going way faster than a Buc-ee’s. Hell, I think the food is better thanks to most having a Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr attached as well!

      1. Buc-ee’s went anti-semi due to the “truck stops are dirty and truckers are trash” days. Which, yeah, a lot of truck stops were nasty and some still are, but it plays in the old “truckers” as second rate people cliche that I wish we could move beyond.

        1. I got lost in the beef jerky section once……wife couldn’t find me. Only to find out she was looking in the OTHER beef jerky section. Not to be confused with the beef jerky counter, the beef jerky end cap, or the checkout beef jerky section.

        2. Granted I’ve only been to 1 Buc-ee’s a few times (Daytona, FL) I can say that I’ve seen plenty of truck stops in my travels that take up a significantly larger footprint than a Buc-ee’s. Look at the Buc-ee’s in Daytona from Google Maps. Most of the footprint is gas pumps and parking, hell I think the pumps take up even more space than their retail.

          Now try to add in semi pumps and semi parking? Nah, you’re on I-80 Truck Stop size territory and that’s not sustainable for multiple locations. I will grant you that it’s still huge and arguably unnecessary, but that makes the EV charger argument all the better.

          1. That one’s relatively* compact, from what I’ve seen of it. It’s when they gun for most-pumps-ever or store square footage records when I just kind of scratch my head and go, “but semis are the hard line in the sand?!”

            *”relatively” is doing a WHOLE LOT OF WORK in this sentence

            1. Completely fair, I’ve not been to any Texas locations so I’m sure I have a skewed perception. I did Google a few locations in Texas and I see what you mean when it comes to space.

  10. Was just at our Local Buc-ee’s yesterday. Been open for years now and the Men’s Room still looks like it was just finished. As you fill up you see on the card above the pump the job positions and wages/benefits they offer. For basic floor people and cashiers they start at $18/hr. Restroom Crew starts at $20. They take that shit seriously!
    As for EV charging, they don’t have indoor seating of any kind so your hour or so will either be spent wandering the store or sitting in your car.

    1. Buc-ee’s is an incredibly demanding employer. They’ll work you considerably harder than other similar jobs, which is a large part of why they pay more. While I admire them for paying great wages, I’m not sure it’s enough to justify the how hard they work you, but I haven’t experienced it myself so I can’t really judge. Just going off the ramblings of people on Reddit and such, so who knows how “fair” it is to judge at all.

  12. Buc-ee’s rules, I love stopping at them when I’m driving through TX. It’s an extremely logical place for EV charging. If I had an EV, I would go out of my way to charge there.

  13. Another curiosity about Buc-ees is it’s not a truck stop, because semi trucks are not allowed. My daughter described it as “Gas Station meets Cracker Barrel meets Hobby Lobby meets 7Eleven” We went to the one in Centerville TN twice in one day on a road trip last fall and it was the best place to gas up, poop, and get a bag of Buc O’s on the planet.

    1. I drive a Mercedes-Benz.
      I’m all for clean restrooms and good food.
      Because when we’re on a road trip and making a midday stop, we’re not looking for valet parking at the Four Seasons.

  16. None of those people drive a Mercedes and it shows. They’re not exactly special cars, their internal image of “Mercedes driver” is still like 80s yuppies.

    1. I live in the Florida Panhandle a half hour from the Buc-ee’s on I-10 in Baldwin County, Alabama. It is on a direct path from every direction to the beaches of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, in the middle of one of the fastest growing counties in the United States. There is no shortage of people on their way to an expensive condo, where they will spend an expensive week playing golf at expensive courses, shopping at expensive stores, going on expensive sport fishing excursions, and eating expensive meals in expensive restaurants.

      You bet your ass there are plenty of expensive automobiles in the parking lot at Buc-ee’s on a busy summer weekend, and most other weekends as well, and no small number of them are made by Mercedes-Benz. Money travels that road, and money needs gas and a pee break, too. Or, as it happens, a charge. And Buc-ee’s is the very nicest place to do that. What, like they’re going to the TA instead or something?

  18. This is SO GREAT! My Greenie Earth-Saver vegetarian solar-paneled friends* down the street are taking delivery of a new Mercedes EV in the next few weeks…

    I CAN’T WAIT to recommend to them that they should plan on stopping at Buc-ee’s to charge up. It may just be enough to make them move back to California, or at least Austin.

    *The wife lady female one of the partners told my wife she thinks my wife uses her washing machine too much. How she knows this? Maybe our clothes are too clean or something…

    By the way, “To call a Buc-ee’s a gas station is to call the Sistine Chapel a church, or the Taj Mahal a gravesite.” is pretty darn accurate. They’re just an amazing spectacle to visit in themselves. Oh, and the Buc-ee’s nearest me is charging $2.69 a gallon for regular today if you haven’t taken delivery of YOUR Mercedes EV yet.

    1. Same where I am – the one on I-10 in Alabama – and they had three tankers staged up. Buc-ee’s earned undying loyalty after Hurricane Sally when most gas stations were shut down for lack of fuel or electricity.
      Buc-ees ran a constant stream of tankers from the refinery and didn’t raise their price one cent. IIRC it was around $1.75 at the time.
      Same can be said of Publix Grocery whose stores all have full capacity generators and who clears out the frozen foods and stocks all the freezers with ice..which is the thing you need most.

      1. That’s awesome—and convinced me to stop the next time I have a chance. Any corporation that pays reasonable wages and plans ahead to take care of people during truly shitty times is worth giving my business to.

        -did 20 years in C-stores that weren’t like that

    5. Oh, boy, the barbecue wars.

      Aight, look.

      I was born in Georgia. I was raised in Alabama. I have lived in many southern states and a few in the west, and I have sampled all the various styles of barbecue that stay in a civil war with one another, in the places that bore them – Texas brisket, Kansas City, Memphis dry rub, Alabama red AND white, North Carolina vinegar, South Carolina mustard, you name it. You know what I have learned?

      All barbecue matters.

      Please, the world divides us up enough as it is. Can we not simply agree that God’s gift of barbecue manifests itself in many ways, and all barbecue is the path to heaven? Amen.

      On the other hand, people who refer to grilling hot dogs and burgers as a “barbecue” are blasphemers who will burn in hell like the sinners they are. That’s not a barbecue – that’s a cookout. Call it by its correct name. The fate of your very soul depends on it.

      Also, both Buc-ee’s brisket sandwiches and their pulled pork sandwiches – yes, they have both – are pretty dang good.

      2. You come in here pretending to be for unity, getting us all hungry with your talk of delicious fire-cooked fare, and then chop us right in half. I will refer to cook anything with fire, even hot dogs, EVEN VEGETABLES, as BBQing.

            1. Because both those people are dead wrong, that’s why. “Grill” is not a synonym for “barbecue.” You grill food on high, direct heat. You barbecue food on low, indirect heat.

      4. Okay, barbecue is a style and most any proteins cooked in that manner are technically BBQ. Grilling anything is not and just applying “BBQ” sauce doesn’t make it so. I was just having a little South Carolina fun by messing with Texas.

      5. Santa Maria Ca Tri-tip is dry rub and BBQ IMHO But yeah southern is dry rub, south east mustard based, go North vinegar, in the North tomato based, not sure of the heartland.

  20. My only question is what charging standard will it use? The US is moving to NACS and if Mercedes is building chargers for the US market why make them with any other charging plug standard?

  21. It’s arguable that the BBQ you can get at Buc-ee’s isn’t even the best BBQ you can get from a chain of gas stations in Texas (the best is from a random dude with a smoker and a giant worn Igloo-brand cooler setup in a parking lot of a place called, like, Major Brand Gas, the second best is probably Rudy’s). But it’s food in a safe and friendly place to park your car and get some gas.

    This is the truest statement about Texas gas stations I’ve ever read in print. When it comes to both BBQ and tacos, the less gentrified a gas station stand/trailer is in appearance, the higher the likelihood is that you’ve struck gold. Rudy’s is still up there, though: a step above Buc-ee’s for BBQ, a step below all your usual favorite local places and/or that guy with the Igloo coolers, and pretty much at the higher end of “mid.”

    Buc-ee’s is a tourist trap. It’s just large. Adding non-Tesla chargers there is long overdue because it is the kind of weird stuff-vortex with lots of things to browse and fart around with while you wait on your car, and there’s usually an annoying crowd to contend with. Anyway, the food is reliably decent. You know you’re gonna get a good lunch from the Wawa-knock-off screens. There will be plenty of clean places to poop, and it’s fine. I do ding them for having auto-flush toilets, even though most have been well-timed and don’t go off mid-turd. Let me row-my-own, you cowards. Anyway, they are often placed in locations that don’t have much else around, and that roughly coincides with the urgent need to drop a deuce.

    The crowds are annoying, though, and frankly, I have seen a Buc-ee’s before. The “Bussy’s” joke was funny the first time, and like every other meme or tic that’s originated on TikTok, it’s just been beaten to death now. Also, dorks making vertical videos for the internet are standing in between me and the toilet. That’s a problem. There are less irritating places to stop if you just need to poop, grab caffeine/snacks and leave, especially since Buc-ee’s virality has turned large gas stations into an arms race down here. Clean bathrooms are almost a norm now?

    If it’s big, relatively new and well-lit, you’ve probably found one of these other locations aiming for Aplin’s jugular, with the bonus of fewer goofs from Oklahoma wandering aimlessly by a jerky wall in your way. Hopefully more of these add chargers soon, too, for convenience’s sake. That being said, I still prefer pooping at coffee shops. If you don’t need the gas part of a gas station, you’re theoretically not beholden to stopping at a gas station for caffeinated beverages and poops with the fury of a thousand half-digested taquitos. Put more fast chargers by those.

    Also, I’m still mad about Buc-ee’s poor attempt at kolaches. That ain’t the right dough and you know it, Beaver Man.

      1. I am a connoisseur, what can I say?

        I will admit that the facilities are woefully inadequate at Czech Stop, though. They try, gosh, they seem to try, but there aren’t enough terlets or personnel to keep up with the busy hours there. I will fetch my kolaches, then drive into Waco to unload at a coffee house if I can hold it. Dichotomy Coffee’s pots are reliably clean.

        Slovacek’s across I-35 is one of those Buc-ee’s-competitor mega-stations, but they also don’t get the kolache dough right. The stomach wants what it wants, and that overrules my butt.

        Hruska’s is the other frequent mid-point. It’s a more remote location with more stalls, so it’s generally fine. I think they might have my favorite gas station kolaches? That may be the rose-colored glasses of the “I’m here because I’m farting around at MSR-Houston this weekend” that I miss. I miss racing my damn cars.

        The upside to Buc-ee’s is, well, the same upside as a Starbucks. Mid but consistent, with reliably clean bathrooms.

        If you just need to poop, though, I was pretty blown away by the last travel center/rest stop I used. As in, the big state-run one outside Salado on I-35. There’s no snacks outside of a vending machine and it ain’t fancy under any definition of that word, but the bathrooms were damn near spotless and there were a ton of them. YMMV on location, but it feels like they’ve stepped up their game on those.

        This has been Stef Reviews Roadside Pooping In Texas.

        1. The quality of rest stops are hit or miss. I’ve seen and used some truly bad ones.

          On I-35 between Waco and Austin, there was a rest stop I stopped at needing to take a massive emergency dump. The stalls were so short that everyone in the room could see me from the torso up as I did my business, including a coworker who followed me in. To make matters worse, the room was an echo chamber, leaving nothing to the imagination of anyone regarding what was going down in the stall they could see my face jutting above. I came across and had to use a similar facility in North Carolina for the same purpose. I’ll always use these facilities begrudgingly if that is what is presented when I need to go, but I do have my limits.

          I’ve also come across rest stops that had no doors on the stalls. That’s a whole different level of WTF? Only in dire emergencies. And a “fuck you” to whatever perverted demon decided this was appropriate. But that’s not even as bad as it gets.

          I once came across a rest stop Mens’ room that didn’t even have stalls at all. Just a trough for #1 and a row of sit-down toilets for #2, fully exposed to anyone in the room with zero privacy. I managed to barely hold it, and the dingy gas station 10 minutes up the road was a very welcome site. Had I not gone earlier that morning, I may not have had the opportunity to hold out for the gas station. It wouldn’t have been the first time I used such a facility, but it is far enough from ideal that if I think I can hold out for a more preferred environment, I will. But it’s not without risk.

          Considering the above, I’ve NEVER been disappointed by a Buc-ee’s restroom. I could do without the crowds and long lines getting in my way though, but I’d still rather deal with that than not have any privacy at all to drop a deuce. I never feel obligated to buy anything. Get in, void, get out. With the crowds of people around and queues of vehicles getting fuel, these places aren’t hurting for money.

          Another consistent place with good crappers is Love’s. Often floor to ceiling stalls too, with music or white noise, AND they provide 2-ply.

          Valero, Shell, Chevron, and the like have all been hit or miss. I have war stories on that subject, enough to write a book.

          But truth be told, I’m not picky these days. I eat like a horse, am almost constantly cramming food down my gullet, exercise enough to burn it all off and stay skinny, and well, what goes in inevitably comes out. Just an unavoidable fact of life. I use public restrooms a lot, more often than not without a choice in the matter. No medical issues, it’s just that I eat 3-4x more than most people and go through more than a gallon of water a day. Thus, any public restroom is better than squatting at the side of a highway with your pants down and traffic passing by, even if some of them only marginally so.

          Buc-ee’s is close to top tier for their facilities, consistently, IMO.

            1. Not sure, but I have seen some terrible BP/Shell facilities. I once stopped at a Shell off of TX-59 during an emergency and the Mens’ room stall was missing its door. Since it was a crowded truck stop, there were also a lot of people coming in and out as I was using it, making things extra awkward. To their credit, the facility was clean.

              I also came across a Kuntry Korner off of I-37 with the same issue, but was able to hold out for a more ideal location for the drop-op.

              This said, I’d prefer a clean and well-stocked facility with no privacy to any filthy facility that is unsuitable for a sit-down job.

              I once stopped at a Valero whose only sit-down toilet was too filthy to sit on, and toilet paper was not going to be sufficient to clean it up enough to use(I’ll spare the gory details), prompting me to stop at a Denny’s nearby that had the exact same issue, and then finally settling on a Chevron that had a single-user unisex restroom, which given the advanced state of the emergency, I proceeded to defile for the next 20+ minutes, only to hear a few knocks on the door, and exit to a line of people who were waiting for their turn who probably heard everything that went down.

              Bucee’s and Love’s have never disappointed on any metric regarding their restrooms. Never had to deal with any of the above drama at one, ever. Highly recommend. 10/10 for their clean, comfortable, private, well-stocked crappers and generously-partitioned urinals.

          2. Huh, that’s likely the other side of the rest stop I was impressed by. YMMV on side of road and gender of restroom, I guess. I will say that’s one of the newer ones that I tried, as the older Texas rest stops left a bit to be desired.

            Love’s usually isn’t that bad, either. I’ve been in a couple bad ones before, but those are getting surprisingly rare.

            1. It was 2011 when I used it. It may or may not have changed since then. As I was trying to pick a stall, I could see the faces of two other men sitting in them as I walked by. It was awkward not just for me, but for the coworker who came in after me.

    3. Many years ago there was a major oil company gas station in my town that had horrendous bathrooms. One day someone took a Magic Marker and permanently marked all the defects and what they thought about them. Not long after that the restrooms were completely renovated.
      No, it wasn’t me (I wouldn’t vandalize a restroom), but I haven’t forgotten the incident and how it got quick results.

  22. “If you took the average transaction price of every full-sized pickup at Buc-ee’s on a regular day and every Mercedes, my guess is the trucks would be worth more.”
    I doubt it. The trucks may have cost more, but are they worth more?

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