24 HOURS AT THE WORLD'S LARGEST TRUCK STOP

a portion of this video is sponsored by the motley fool we're about to spend the next 24 hours at the world's largest truck stop we're gonna try the food check out their amenities bathroom are we four-year-olds and hopefully learn a little bit more about the unique lives of full-time truck drivers so if i had a camera and came up to you and you were a stranger and i said hey do you have a bed in your truck how weird would that be [Music] today we are in iowa and we are on our way to the world's largest truck stop it's called iowa 80 and this place is huge it sits on 75 acres of land which is equivalent to 57 american football fields every day it serves over 5 000 customers the main building is 100 000 square feet and there's parking for 900 semi trucks all right we have officially arrived at the world's largest truck stop and i don't know if it's just because i'm paying attention and recognizing them more but in the last 15 minutes we have literally passed hundreds of semis so my trucks big rigs 18 wheelers didn't know there are so many names [Applause] so iowa 80 was founded in 1964. it was just a tiny little pumper with two diesel pumps and a small store and i don't know that the moon family ever set out to be the world's largest it was like we realized it and then said okay now we have to claim it and we have to make sure that we stay the world's largest we're currently in the main building which is over a hundred thousand square feet but this room alone is probably bigger than most truck stops that we've been to it's a combination between a food court a convenience store and like a retail shop he's fake i legit thought these were real the other half of the main building is pretty much all stuff just for truck drivers oh there's an entire semi truck in this room i've never been in this to my truck before we have a golden sparkly yeah shifter shifter there is so much going on here let's check out the bed they have a little closet to hang stuff here a refrigerator truck drivers are like the og van liners whoa look at this exhaust pipe ours is like do we have an exhaust pipe the chrome illuminated donkey this would be good for our next adventure foreshadowing we are ready to go you get some lights for the van what if we left here with like blinking lights all around our windshield check out this horn maybe we should get one of these for the vans we have an area where you can test out mattresses for your truck oh wow they have a custom shop where you can pretty much get anything you want customized apparently some truck drivers are very proud of their trucks and they'll get their entire truck embroidered on something the original couple who started iowa 80. the wife was super crafty and loved sewing and embroidering and so this was like her thing so up here in the second level is where things get really interesting we have massage chairs it's going it's going but i haven't paid my back is rolling the most unexpected part of iowa 80 for me is there's a real dentist office as opposed to a fake dentist office and right down the hall every evening from five to nine you can have prayer and fellowship in the bible study room and right next door is the gym you don't have a lot of equipment but it is free believe it or not there's a full-time barber there's also an entire laundromat containing 27 machines this is the lounge where on sunday mornings they hold a church service but during the week it's just a dark relaxing place to sit watch tv unfortunately the movie theater is close which is very sad because i was really looking forward to going to the movies good job they're good at locking things in addition to a dentist office they also have a professional chiropractor which if you think about it makes a lot of sense heather said when they're open the line is usually out the store i know this would be my first stop if i was turnt over which i feel like we pretty much are at this point we've done a lot of driving the last few weeks this tank right here feeds the diesel pumps across the entire truck stop and we learned that it holds one million gallons of diesel just think about how expensive that would be to fill up it seems like something that should be protected with a little more than three strands of barbed wire the tanks on the side of a truck hold 250 gallons so i mean this is pumping at an insane rate we would be full in like what 15 seconds if you see that green tank on the side there that's the fuel tank and then there's one on the other side as well so between those two tanks a semi truck can hold up to 500 gallons of diesel to put that in perspective i think our van can hold 20 to 25 a semi truck is holding 20 times more fuel than our van so right next to the truck wash they have a pet washing station we just learned that a lot of drivers drive with a pet like as a companion or a support dog and it just makes so much sense i love it we've left the main building and we've made our way over to the trucking museum which was started by the moon family the same family that started iowa 80. and what started as a passion project to save some old trucks eventually turned into the largest trucking museum in the entire world there are over 100 old trucks in here and the best part is it's completely free and then of course we can't forget the women pioneers in trucking luella bates it was kind of one of those things where she was thrown into it in world war one and fell in love with trucks do you know what the ratio of male to female drivers are it's about 10 women so this is an armored police vehicle from the 1930s that was used in minneapolis and we're just going to break the rules oh special accent look at how thick these doors are they're bulletproof these were the gun porch the police would crank that open and they could stick their guns out so the tires have protection from the front but not at all from the side this is an reo speedwagon the band this is where they got their name all right it is lunch time so the final stop in the main building is the iowa 80 kitchen so in addition to a food court they also have their own restaurant i'm so hungry are we near the ocean no we're not so i don't think i'm gonna get the fish sandwich so we would love to start with the cheese curds whoa baby i think this might be my first fried cheese curd blue so good keep in mind we're at a truck stop right now and i have handmade local cheeses hot that was really hot mmm that's like one of the most unhealthy things in the world well it's so good i'm gonna get the homemade meatloaf want to do the pork chops wow one pork chop would have been more than enough and there's two this is what heather said we had to get i would say the most popular thing ordered in the restaurant has to be the meatloaf dinner wow i feel like meatloaf and gravy it's kind of a version of turkey gravy that's acceptable to have any day of the year like i feel like this should be eaten on a holiday only but it's just a random thursday according to the internet iowa produces the most fork in the entire country there's a t-shirt over there that says the state bird of iowa is a flying pig so the pork chop just felt like the obvious choice but i made a tragic mistake you can't eat a pork chop without mashed potatoes so uh is this like a thing or did we only do this in my family growing up let's just say it tastes as good as it looks i'm super impressed [Music] what is your name my name is there any chance you drive a truck just a little bit can we see it you could yeah nate actually watches our videos and our goal was to find a truck driver to talk to to be able to learn more about their life and actually see inside of the truck you gotta hop in and hit the horn okay oh my gosh look at these rear view mirrors oh they're lifting the seat it's like an elevator all right i think i can handle this watch out everybody my schedule it's uh sleep for 10. i can drive for 11. i usually bump about 60 to 70 hours a week so how long are you away from home uh average for me is five to six days but like some of these people it might be months do you ever do any like sightseeing on your drives or is it strictly business this is about as much sightseeing as i can goodbye fist bump see ya bye he was so sweet nate was awesome and it was super cool to learn a little bit about what it's like to be a full-time truck driver and get to see inside his truck but what we really wanted to see was one of the trucks that someone lives out of after living in a van for over a year i'm just so curious what their setup is so it's time to get a little awkward i don't think i can do it it's literally like walking up to a stranger and asking to go in their house with a camera also a lot of truck drivers are very burly men they're very intimidating looking people so if i had a camera and came up to you and you were a stranger and i said hey do you have a bed in your truck how weird would that be that's so weird i don't know i can't decide excuse mission failed i think he was scared of the camera i don't want to be in camera okay and he was embarrassed that his truck wasn't nice how do you know it's a cool truck if it's a peterbilt or it can work so i don't know if we should just like go sit in front of one of those that's we're not going sitting in front of someone's truck this is like the most awkward thing we've got i'm channeling my inner yes theory right now still no luck i feel like this is going to get even more awkward when the sun goes down are you sleeping in your truck tonight yeah having a good night you're asking the next two i've done the first two but then it's less creepy coming from you no i'm so thirsty one more so hot and we'll take it completely thank you thank you one of our goals we were so close all day to see inside someone's truck really what are you sleeping we have a van oh okay you're one of those people give me a second i'm so excited we weren't even seeking them out anymore i just given up on being awkward and asking people and this very nice person saw us with our camera and said you should go take a picture of my truck and you're awkward again we're like do you have a venice hey yes my name is josh i'm from uh iowa i've been driving trucks what's your schedule like i like to go out for three weeks and then go home for a week i'm the fourth generation my grandmother grow my mother my my dad my great grandfather i mean it's just the wrong one that's super cool did you always know that this is what you're going to do can i see your tap one more time i'm actually a peterborough guy for sure he just told us we could go inside and give ourselves a tour here we go whoa baby how do i look this is my eye level this is the road he's made some cool customizations we have a blue sparkly disco ball as the [Music] shifter all of these little knobs are made out of gold bullets there are so many levels and numbers up here i think this might be the horn i don't think i'm gonna i'm gonna get in there this looks about the size of a twin bed with a top bunk that can pull down we have these like sunroof windows which is super nice he's got blacked out windows on both sides and a refrigerator ac back here looks like he has controls for the ac right from his bed now we know where truck drivers are hanging out when they're just sitting on the side of the road it's amazing thank you so much for your time yeah that's so heavy not only did we get to see inside one but it was one of the coolest looking ones in the entire parking lot you picked a fudge flavor no doubt chocolate coffee mocha fudge and let's say it's dark you were so confident all right best part of the day bro so iowa 80 has an entire dinner buffet and that was the plan for tonight until we ate way too much for lunch kara had two entire pieces of meat no ice cream by one of our pork chops we decided instead we'd skip dinner and we'd do a dessert tasting and help you decide if you ever come to iowa 80 which dessert you should eat based totally on our taste buds starting with the brookie half cookie half brownie whoa okay way better i thought there's no way anything else beats that i thought it was going to be thick and dry and i was going to need a glass of milk instead it's basically a smooshed brownie with a cookie cake laid on top look at that working i think we've been brutal we're almost 12 hours in at this truck stop now i think we might be a little delirious you've eaten all of this i picked this out you take all three of them oh and i feel like the fudge will be a good like between break up break up the brookie and the snooki what's the snooki our second option is the chocolate coffee mocha fudge oh my gosh it literally tastes like cake icing last but not least we have the shmookie no we're not doing that again oh my god is it good yes wow you cannot go wrong with iowa 80 desserts [Music] bathroom are we four-year-olds we have lived in our van for over a year now and we've been to a lot of truck stops but we've never really known if the amenities that truckers are offered also apply to us so we've never taken advantage of any of them but i feel like here we're allowed to use everything that the truckers are offered so we're wondering if you want one car or two i will just do one all right we just paid 14 for a shower and we got this ticket driver number 316. we were just told to wait until this number appears on the screen and then that'll tell us which shower to go to this is our shower so our receipt came with a pin number [Applause] we're just taking up one less truck driver shower the craziest thing about this is when we paid for the shower she handed us the receipt and she said you can take as long as you want we could take an hour shower and nobody would say anything but you're 14. so we have a very spacious regular restroom sink toilet toilet paper make sand they provide clean towels there's this beautiful stone detail i kind of feel like we're at a resort and not a truck stop and a giant shower with soap do you think any of the truck drivers may not move i have no complaints about that shower the water pressure is great it's hot this feels weird never talk to anyone while she's dipping my hair i've taken those things there's a q-tip part in addition to 900 spaces for semi trucks they also have around 30 set aside for rvs vans and other self-contained vehicles you can park here overnight for free no questions asked remember when we tried to spend the night at bucky's and we could go sleep at walmart and stuff don't feel like we've really done that much today but somehow i feel really tired [Music] forgot my wallet so close yes morning cheers let me try einstein's it's very different it tastes like a paper cup i didn't expect truck stop coffee to live up to what we normally make but i should have lowered my expectations it's not bad the way they didn't even make me pay for it because i had this fancy mug wow which we did pay for how much was the month ten dollars what a deal and best of all this cup is not as well insulated as the one from bucky's all right our 24 hours at the iowa 80 truck stop is coming to a close and i realize that the title of this video is silly like the entire idea of spending 24 hours at a truck stop is a little silly but it was so much more than that we learned a lot about truck stops and truck drivers to the point that i'll never drive past the truck stop or look at a date team we would say what surprised me most about truck drivers is how passionate they were about their own truck and heather talked a lot about family and multiple generations driving trucks and that just being like a family business and two of the three truck drivers that we actually got to talk to both told us that their dad their grandfather they've been driving trucks for multiple generations in their family between the hot coffee and this bucky's outfit i'm in a puddle i love the bucky's outfit but this is not something that should live in the van in the summer will you come from the back oh gosh gary killed it are you laughing at your own joke get the cheese curds check out the museum museum kara says i say that word funny museum so there's this little soap dispenser thing in the shower and i figured it was just like all-purpose shampoo body wash all the stuff i like couldn't get the soap off i was like why is the soap not getting off my body body soap i just washed my entire body with shampoo

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 3,626,592

Keywords: Motley fool, investing, stocks, stock picks, stock market, stock advisor, how to invest, fool.com, iowa, iowa 80, iowa vlog, van life iowa, kara and nate, kara and nate vlog, van life, #vanlife, tiny home, tiny home on wheels, converted sprinter van, vlog, travel, travel vlog, travel couple, couple vlog, world's largest truck stop, daily vlog, full time travel, sprinter van conversion, unique accomodations, van life usa, iowa 80 truck stop, iowa 80 tour, travel vlogger, usa

Id: JfKXt69rJrQ

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021