Today, as the number of Sikh truckers has grown, dozens of no-frill highway stops selling food from India’s Punjab region have sprung up. Truck Stop 40, on the outskirts of Sayre, Okla., population 4,625, is among the oldest, biggest and best known.
Truck Stop 40 is easy to skip. Yellow billboards with bold red letters advertise it off Exit 26, halfway between Amarillo and Oklahoma City, promising a “truck and service garage” that sells sandwiches. But mechanics and fast food are easy to come by on Interstate 40 and by themselves are no reason to stop.
“We don’t know anybody from town, but with Punjabi truckers we are famous,” says Harpreet Chhoker, 52, who along with her husband has run the 24-hour vegetarian restaurant next to a horse pasture for 11 years. The Chhoker family's truck stop includes a deli, mechanic shop, vegetarian eatery and a parking lot for truckers who sleep overnight in their rigs. Brothers Randeep Singh, 21, and Hardeep Singh, 24, stop by on their way home to Fresno after loading their trailer with dog food in New Jersey. After immigrating in 2016 from the northern Indian city of Hoshiarpur, they worked at gas stations before switching to trucking.
An American flag covers a window in the back of the dining space that looks into the mechanic shop next door, where Chhoker’s husband, Raj Chhoker, works daily aligning tires and replacing alternators.
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