Buc-ee's bigness
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I was planning to write a post on this chain of phenomenal gas stations cum country / convenience stores (gives a new meaning to that expression), so was tickled when jhh beat me to mentioning it in this comment.
Several days ago, i visited one in the outskirts of Dallas. As per many things Texas, it was BIG. Outside, it had more than 80 pumps, and inside it had more than 80 cashiers. The store stretched on and on and on, longer than a football field. I felt like I was in a Star Wars space ship cantina. The store-station was equal to ten of our biggest Wawa station-stores, which I treasure. It had a parking lot that accommodated hundreds of cars.
They had an incredible amount of food / snacks and merchandise (clothing, furniture), all sorts of nuts and jerky, fudge, jams, and jellies. They even had cotton candy in various colors and flavors. I headed to the barbecue station ("Texas Round Up") that was smack dab in the middle of the gigantic building and ordered a medium size brisket sandwich. The manager of that section asked if I wanted my meat to be sliced or pulled or a combination. I ordered the latter and said, "May I have cheese on my sandwich?" The big manager replied, somewhat indignantly, but still politely, "We don't put cheese on our brisket". Ahem!
I could have stayed in that Buc-ee's for hours, but it was getting dark, and we needed to get home.
Selected readings
KeithB said,
January 2, 2026 @ 8:19 pm
Never been to one.
However, in Needles, CA there is a billboard with the Buckee's Beaver with an enigmatic "864 miles", which I believe puts it in Amarillo.
Ron Irving said,
January 2, 2026 @ 9:33 pm
I read about Buc-ee's in the Washington Post a little over two years ago
(https://wapo.st/495o1Qa).
We had a trip planned in Texas the following April for the eclipse, so I checked locations and was thrilled to see that we would pass a Buc-ee's on our drive from Austin to San Antonio the day after the eclipse. Our stop exceeded expectations. On our return to Austin three days later, we stopped again. Nine days later (it was a busy month), on a drive from Raleigh to Charleston, we stopped at a Buc-ee's in Florence, South Carolina. It's rare that we are in Buc-ee's country. Yet, one year after that we were in Dallas, with Oklahoma City next. This allowed us to visit the Denton Buc-ee's on the drive up. My wife has had enough, but I'm hooked.
Alas, we have no upcoming trip that will take us near a Buc-ee's. Nor do I see plans for a Buc-ee's opening near Seattle. Sigh.
Here's another WP article, on a new location in Virginia:
https://wapo.st/4aJ3QJ2
Michael Nash said,
January 3, 2026 @ 12:55 am
How is Buc-ee pronounced?
Olaf Zimmermann said,
January 3, 2026 @ 9:15 am
And how exactly am I supposed to translate any of this into British English?
This is where linguistics meets anthropology (i.e. footwork and dirty fingernails) – even in the Anglosphere.
david said,
January 3, 2026 @ 4:24 pm
Bucky Beaver was for the inspiration of the name and mascot of the Texas-based gas station Buc-ee's. He was in a popular commercial in the 50s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipana
Michael Nash said,
January 4, 2026 @ 12:36 am
@Olaf: exactly! Divided by a common language indeed
@david: than you very much! I would never in a million years have guessed that pronunciation. From the spelling I was guessing Busey (b-you-sea, sorry for the lack of IPA)
Philip Taylor said,
January 4, 2026 @ 8:38 am
I can't see how you arrived at that, Michael — with the hyphenation as given ("Buc-ee"), I would be hard put to imagine that the first syllable would end with a soft 'c. OK, if one follows John Wells' word division, "Fac-ile" would be a counter example, but in general I would expect most consonant-vowel-c syllables to end with a hard 'c', not a soft one.
Joyce Melton said,
January 5, 2026 @ 12:13 am
Bucky Beaver was a Disney-designed mascot for Ipana toothpaste who sang "Brusha, brusha, brusha!" from the '50s to the '70s. It's still a brand name in some countries, but I don't know if they use the character. I think they spell it Buc-ee for the gas station to avoid possible trademark problems.
Michael Nash said,
January 5, 2026 @ 12:50 am
@Philip Taylor: your own experience colours your expectations. Mine is different, and I'd note strongly that this kind of wordplay seems much more common in AmE than BrE, so BrE intuition and experience will be different to AmE.
I would expect it end -ck, as in the word buck itself. It's not spelt that way, and I automatically assumed the difference in spelling was significant. As you kind of mention, whenever a lone letter c is followed by a vowel it's most often a soft c (/s/).
Similarly with the vowel. implies /C(j)uC/ to me, as in rumour, tuna, puker and tuber. To have the vowel Buc-ee actually has, I would expect followed by a consonant: buck, duct, puck, cuck (with cuckoo as a counterexample, at least in Standard BrE)
Philip Taylor said,
January 5, 2026 @ 9:27 am
I completely agree that one's own experience colours one's expectations, Michael, and it is only to be expected that your experience(s) will differ from mine, but I do not see your second paragraph as relevant — we are not discussing how something pronounced /ˈbʌk iz/ might be expected to be spelled, but rather how something spelled "Buc-ee's" might be expected to be pronounced. Now my experiences include encountering things such as "Tic Tacs" (a brand of small, hard mints), "Pac-a-macs" (lightweight plastic or synthetic raincoats), "macs" (macintoshes), "Macs" (personal computers made by Apple), "sacs" (pouches or bag-like structures, or enclosed cavities in the body), "vacs" (vacuum cleaners) and an aunt with surname "Lac", all of which take the hard-c, as does "Muc-off" (a cycle cleaning solution); what, in your experience, leads you to expect that "Buc" might take a soft-c ?
maidhc said,
January 5, 2026 @ 5:13 pm
Ron Irving: Nor do I see plans for a Buc-ee's opening near Seattle.
You do have Fred Meyer though, which is a unique regional shopping experience of its own kind.
Michael Nash said,
January 5, 2026 @ 9:34 pm
@Philip Taylor All those examples end -ac or -acs except for Muc-off, so I don't think they're relevant. I've never heard of Muc-off so it's not part of my own experience not (not saying it's not available in the UK, just that I haven't heard of it).
I was thinking of puce, truce, lucid and even mucilaginous. I think it's an important part of my experience that, until Buc-ee was explained to me, I'd never ever seen -uc as an English spelling at all! The only example I had heard of is the French name Luc, which I wouldn't think is relevant.
In fact the only examples I could find (https://www.thewordfinder.com/wordlist/words-ending-with-uc/) are six things I've never heard of and a marginal French borrowing (BARLEDUC, BONDUC, DOUC, GWEDUC, MUCLUC, RUC and CAOUTCHOUC).
Philip Taylor said,
January 6, 2026 @ 4:13 am
Michael — "I was thinking of puce, truce, lucid and even mucilaginous" — yes, but none of those have (or could take) a hyphen (or a space) after the 'c'. It is the hyphen in "Buc-ee's" that is critical to the understanding of its intended pronunciation
Jonathan Smith said,
January 6, 2026 @ 10:14 pm
Well Michael Nash's objections have inspired me at least to read it "buttcheese" — we'll see how that goes should some fever dream or acid trip find me therein
David Marjanović said,
January 8, 2026 @ 8:35 am
In all of these, it is the following e or i that creates the /s/. The preceding u is obviously irrelevant.
The only exception is Tucson, AZ, whose c is simply a lie.
ajay said,
January 8, 2026 @ 10:30 am
Vaguely related to the Buc-ee's debate, I discovered to my great surprise that the Rock-Ola jukebox, as seen in every 1950s diner and recreation thereof, is not called that because it has anything to do with rock music – the name is 20 years older than the first use of the term "rock and roll" to mean the musical genre. It's not Rock-Ola in the sense that you shine your shoes with Shinola, play your RCA Victor records on your Victrola, and pay off corrupt municipal officials with payola.
Nor is it the other way round: the term "rock and roll" does not come from the fact that it's the sort of music that you play on your Rock-Ola juke box.
No, the Rock-Ola jukebox is made by the Rock-Ola Corporation, whose founder was one David Rockola.