Iowa 80: The World's Largest Truck Stop

Just off Interstate Eighty at Walcott, Iowa sits the largest truck stop on earth. Iowa Eighty opened in nineteen sixty-four as a modest Standard Oil station with ten fuel pumps and a full-service restaurant. Bill Moon, the man who launched it, had a hunch this stretch of the new interstate highway would carry a lot of freight.

He was right. After thirty-two expansions, the place now covers roughly two hundred twenty acres, with a main building of about one hundred thirty thousand square feet under one roof, serving five thousand customers a day. There is a dentist, a chiropractor, a movie theater, and a trucking museum on the property.

The Moon family still runs it.