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There is no normal way of life in the United States without a car. In some places it fixes, but in most cases, a car equals prosperity, so everyone rolls around, stops in traffic, and fills up. There are hardly any cities or towns where daily life can be solved without a four-wheel drive vehicle.
Thus, the gas station there is truly a sacred place, Liberty fluid given by the gallon, still shamelessly cheap to European eyes. Of course, the largest gas station in the world can also be found here: the record holder for the Buc-ee series is built in Tennessee, near Sevierville.
It is a giant facility of 6874 square meters, where the nature of the filling station itself is almost secondary. It’s kind of a temple of consumerism, where there’s always room at one of the 120 filling stations, and when the tank is full, you can enter the shopping mall, where 350 workers are waiting for the guest’s wishes, here you can shove a barbecue pot the size of half a beef and enjoy the noise, the shouting, and the pretending with the mascot that resemble a company beaver.
Moreover, visitors are given a guided tour, as if they were in a valuable museum or a thousand-year-old castle. But here, instead of historical ruins, you can enjoy an endless selection of sandwiches and T-shirts that can only be bought locally.
This place is always open, 24 hours a day, every day of the week, a kind of tourist attraction as well as practical functionality.
Buc-ee builds on this, taking the fueling experience to the max, and they’re expanding primarily into southern states that receive this type of atmosphere. And the process doesn’t stop at the small town of 120 charging stations—another Buc-ee has already been built near Austin, Texas, that will be even bigger.
