Jill Schramm/MDN The staff at Hill Eye Clinic are, from left, Danielle Nelson, Darren Hill, Tiffany Baric and Julie Seier.

In an era in which employee longevity is becoming more rare, three long-time workers have combined for 125 years of service to Schatz Crossroads Truck Stop in Minot.

Mike Aschenbrenner has been employed with Schatz for more than 48 years, having started in October 1977 at age 16. Susan VanSickle has 43 years of service, also starting in her teens and working her way from table busser to baker. JoAnn Strobel, with 34 years, started as a server and now is restaurant manager.

Aschenbrenner obtained a job with Schatz in a roundabout way.

“A friend of mine said, ‘You need a job.’ So he filled out the application for me and sent it in,” Aschenbrenner said. “They needed a guy to grease trucks, wash trucks. So, I got hired.”

Aschenbrenner was familiar with trucks because his father, a trucker, occasionally had him help with maintenance. He worked afternoons, weekends and summers for Schatz until graduating from high school. Later, as a full-time employee, he moved from shop work to retreading for a couple of years before coming back to manage the shop. He worked as a truck dispatcher prior to 1985, when he began driving a fuel truck himself.

Aschenbrenner recalls 20 years of many long trips to Regina, Saskatchewan, to pick up fuel.

“I would get here at 2 o’clock in the morning, get a sandwich and water and just go,” he recalled. Cruising down quiet roads with a good song on the radio was the best feeling, he said.

The trips ended in 2010 when he began hauling from Grand Forks and other closer locations. He currently hauls from a Minot fuel source to keep the Schatz tanks full.

Strobel said as a young mother looking for a job years ago, working as a restaurant server appealed to her.

“I love being around customers and I love being social, so I thought, ‘What a cool job,'” she said. “It was kind of perfect for me.”

She worked as a server for quite a few years before moving into management about a decade ago.

VanSickle applied for a job to help support the family after her father was injured in a car crash. She went from table busser to line cook to prep baker to baker.

She comes in at 4 a.m. to ensure the pies and other sweet treats are ready to be served for the day.

“She holds the heart to this restaurant, because if there’s no caramel rolls or scotcheroo bars, people get pretty bent out of shape,” Strobel said of the popularity of those high-demand items.

VanSickle also is responsible for tracking and ordering inventory as well as working with customers who request large bakery orders for meetings or events. It can be a pressing workload, but Strobel said VanSickle is known for her get-it-done attitude and ability to rise to the occasion.

Krista (Schatz) Marshall grew up in the business but said having experienced employees has helped her since returning with her husband to manage the truck stop 15 years ago.

“These three, especially, have been so vital in my training to become the next generation managing it,” she said. The company recently recognized the three as honorary foundation members, acknowledging them as the foundation of the business, she said.

“They’ve helped us become a 50-year-old business,” Marshall said. “It’s people like them that really have laid those cornerstones in our business.”

With the years have come changes, including various building remodels and even a move. Schatz Crossroads began in 1977 on the north side of U.S. Highway 2 & 52 and added a second truck stop on the south side 10 years later. Aschenbrenner and VanSickle followed to the new location, which became the sole location when the two operations combined in 2002.

Strobel also noted the gradual passing of loyal customers and the regular introduction to new customers over the years. As a former server, she recalled the large hand-held devices used to pass orders on to the kitchen. Each menu item was assigned a number, and Strobel and VanSickle still remember the items connected to those numbers years after the switch to a new system with smaller hand-held computers.

The three employees share similar reasons for their longevity. It comes down to work ethic, relationships, job flexibility and a sense of being valued.

The employees credit their work ethic to their upbringing and the attitudes about work that rubbed off on them when they entered the workforce. Aschenbrenner also said he had a lot of respect for his former boss, Danny Schatz, who died in 2022, because Schatz was honest and not afraid to work hands-on next to his staff. Aschenbrenner remembers working to take eight tires off a truck and air them up one Sunday. Schatz stopped by and, seeing his employee’s workload, donned his coveralls and started helping.

The care Danny Schatz showed his workers extended beyond the workplace to their personal lives, Aschenbrenner said. It included the gift of a wedding horse-and-buggy ride when he married, a place to stay in Bismarck when a granddaughter was seeking medical care and taking him along on a trip to Rice Lake to learn to water ski. There was no way to pay him back because he didn’t really even want a thank you, Aschenbrenner said.

Strobel agreed the Schatzes – Danny and Diane and now their daughter Krista and her husband Nicholas – have been generous to employees who are committed to staying long-term.

“They care about their employees very, very much,” she said. “And we care about them.”

The three employees also mention respect and trust that goes both ways and the impact that has had on their interest in remaining with the company. For Aschenbrenner and Strobel, one of the ways trust is reflected is in job flexibility. They put in hours when the work needs doing while benefitting from the ability to attend to personal matters or take in family activities when desired.

“You come to work, you do your job and do what’s expected of you. As long as you do those things, you’re trusted,” Strobel said. “We’ve got that work ethic, and that’s why we’re probably all still here, because there’s a lot of respect both ways.”

VanSickle said not only was there no reason to leave her job, given the relationships she built, but it wasn’t something she even had a chance to think about.

“The time just went faster and faster. You did not even realize how many years have already gone by,” she said.

“The reason why it goes by so fast is you actually don’t mind coming to work,” Strobel added. “Because it’s an easy company, a nice company, to work for.”

None of the employees have any pending retirement dates and only Aschenberger, who is closing in on 49 years, has let it cross his mind, although he knows he will miss the people when the day comes.

VanSickle and Strobel are leaving retirement decisions to another day. Strobel said she likes being around people too much to not have Schatz Crossroads in her future.

“I’m going to be the Schatz greeter,” she said of retirement. “I’m going to sit in a wheelchair and greet everyone.”