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As North Carolina’s first Buc-ee’s travel center rises from the ground in Mebane, the company’s founder indicated last week that he is less likely to look to liberal states for future stores.
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Arch “Beaver” Aplin III made his remarks while opening Buc-ee’s first mega-size travel center in Benton, Arkansas, on Aug. 17. The new store is the same size as the one coming to Mebane — 74,000 square feet — and also boasts 120 gas fueling stations.
“We’re growing. We’re building in a lot of places, but when you find a conservative, business-friendly state with a phenomenal workforce, it makes a difference,” Aplin said in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“And I’m starting to realize life’s too short to try to build in places that people don’t appreciate what you’re bringing versus a place like this, where people do appreciate what you’re building,” Aplin said.
Buc-ee’s has expanded across the South since its founding in Texas in 1982, moving as far up the East Coast as Ohio and Virginia. The latter is the most moderate state with a Buc-ee’s travel center, turning more blue since Barack Obama’s 2008 election, when he was the first Democrat to win a presidential race there since 1964.
Aplin has long supported Republican candidates, putting money behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Trump-backed newcomers.
At the June groundbreaking for Mebane’s new Buc-ee’s in Alamance County, he cast shade on neighboring, heavily Democratic Orange County, when asked about his prior efforts to open the travel center there.
The Orange County plan, just down Interstate 85/40 in Efland, hit a roadblock when residents challenged Buc-ee’s potential environmental impact and the Orange County commissioners pushed the company to build a much smaller travel center.
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Aplin withdrew his plan and entertained a new site at 1425 Trollingwood-Hawfields Road in Mebane for North Carolina’s first store.
“In the county’s infinite wisdom, they decided they didn’t want a Buc-ee’s in Orange County, so the leadership of this community called us and said we did, and so we pivoted … and we went to work right away in Alamance,” Aplin said in June.
“I think it’d be an understatement to say that this is a business-friendly community here [in Mebane], and we respect that, and we love that, and whenever possible, we gravitate towards that, because these projects are big [and] they’re hard to build,” he said.
The state could see more Buc-ee’s travel centers in the future, Aplin announced, and his comments last week in Arkansas are unlikely to change that.
North Carolina is considered a “purple” state, falling somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum, with more liberal voters living in and near urban centers, including in Charlotte and the Triangle and Triad regions.
North Carolina voters tend to favor Republican federal lawmakers, but lean Democratic when it comes to the governor and state executive branch. The number of voters who are registered unaffiliated is growing.
Alamance County is among the more conservative, with Republican lawmakers filling state and federal seats, as well as four of five Alamance County commissioner posts and the sheriff’s office. In 2025, a fifth commissioner, Pamela Thompson, changed her party affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated. Thompson has said she will not seek re-election when her term expires in 2028.
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