John Strong, who ended his long trucking career last year, brought up the old Mass 10 Truck Stop in a recent talk in which he recounted a sketch done of him by an Overdrive artist in 1976. You can hear Strong’s comments on Mass 10 if you advance this recent Overdrive Radio podcast to 5:10.
Strong’s mention of Mass 10 reminded me of the truck stop’s place in Overdrive’s archives, though recollections of the colorful Mass 10, widely known in its day as “The Dump,” are plentiful in online forum threads spanning the last two decades. In the podcast, Strong recalls going on a trip with Overdrive founder Mike Parkhurst and some truckers to meet congressional leaders in Washington, D.C. Mass 10 owner Gene Murphy, an Overdrive advertiser and friend of Parkhurst’s, also went.
Mass 10 was on U.S. 20 near Auburn, Mass., a town just south of Worcester, where I-90 meets I-290. The truck stop was known by many who ran in that region. The owner, who spun the derogatory nickname to his advantage, is remembered for his over-the-top generosity to truckers.
“The Mass 10 Truck Stop, owned and operated by Gene Murphy in the 1960s and ’70s near Auburn, Mass., featured a lake bunkhouse eight miles away,” wrote Overdrive Managing Editor Lucinda Coulter in 2010. “It slept 10 and had a telephone, kitchen, cabana and showers. Murphy provided drivers with transportation to and from the lake house, once his vacation home. The ‘loudest noise in the pine-shaded grove is the television,’ according to Overdrive’s July 1965 story. Murphy lived at the truck stop and was ‘available at any time to talk to truckers over a cup of coffee.’ ”
In another 2010 OverdriveOnline.com story written by Coulter, Russ MacNeil recalled, “In the ‘70s, there weren’t many truck stops in New England.” Mass 10 was for truckers “a safe haven where they could go and not be harassed by police about their trucking.”
MacNeil was an amateur truck photographer whose work appeared in Overdrive. You can see his photos of classic trucks, most of them cabovers, shot in 1974 at Mass 10, in a gallery on Hank’s Truck Pictures website.
Also posting on Hank’s Truck Pictures, “Diesel Gypsy” recalled Mass 10 as “a small dirt parking lot with 2 disel pumps” and a shower in the garage. DG also offered more detail on Murphy’s lake house:
