Bowling Green, MO

Bowling Green is where US-54 crosses US-61, halfway between St. Louis and the lakes, and Ayerco #35 is the truck stop at that crossroads: a fuel plaza on Highway 161 at the edge of town, a short pull off the expressway. Our 75kW Tritium DC fast charger stands in the northeast corner of the lot with a NACS cable and a CCS1 cable, so Tesla and CCS vehicles both plug straight in, and the two cables can work at the same time. A session is $0.42 per kWh plus a $0.99 session fee, paid by card on the pedestal or through the Noodoe app.

The US-54 / US-61 crossroads

From downtown St. Louis it is about 86 miles up 61 — roughly an hour and a half — which puts a top-up here comfortably inside the range of any EV headed for Hannibal, the river towns, or Iowa. From Columbia it is an 85-mile trip east on 54 (about an hour and three quarters), and Kansas City drivers arrive after a little over three hours (209 miles). Hannibal is 32 miles north, so a fill here covers the Mark Twain sights and the drive home; for a longer push up the river, our Canton site is about an hour and a quarter farther on the same road.

Inside the truck stop

Number 35 is a full truck stop, not just a convenience store: staffed around the clock, with restrooms, a Chester’s Fried Chicken deli, coffee, an ATM, a shower, and 50 truck parking spaces. A Hardee’s shares the lot at 18054 Highway 161. Twenty minutes is enough for a sit-down breakfast; forty covers a proper look at town. The Champ Clark House — home of the Missourian who was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919, and a National Historic Landmark — and the 20-acre Henry Lay Sculpture Park, with its collection of international outdoor sculpture, are both in town. Ranacker Conservation Area, 1,447 acres of hiking and fishing on Peno Creek, is a short drive up the highway, and Vandalia Country Club, a nine-hole course, is out on 54 toward Vandalia.

The hardware

The cabinet is a Tritium RTM75, the compact liquid-cooled design Tritium built for exactly this kind of forecourt: IP65-sealed against dust and driving rain, rated to run from −35 °C to 50 °C, so a January cold snap or an August afternoon on the concrete does not throttle it. Its twin cables split the 75 kW between two vehicles when both are connected, and cars that support ISO 15118 Plug & Charge can start a session without touching the screen.

Ayerco is a family-owned northeast Missouri chain founded by W.H. Ayers in 1924, with sixteen stores across eight counties; we have equipment at three of them — here, Canton, and Kirksville. We own the pedestal and watch it day and night.