Farm to Food Bank: On the Road

Forty trucks. Forty drivers. Five boroughs, all before the sun’s fully up. New York’s streets weren’t built for twenty-six-foot box trucks — the map is a hundred and fifty years old and doesn’t care about your route — but these drivers push through anyway, because late means somebody’s kid doesn’t eat tonight.

Some of them know that feeling firsthand — the not-knowing where the next meal’s coming from — and that’s exactly why they show up, tracked, monitored, temperature-checked, every mile logged to make sure nothing spoils before it reaches a family.

This isn’t outsourced anymore; the whole operation runs in-house now, hands-on, full control, built by people who treat transportation as more than logistics. It’s the last mile — and it’s the one that turns a warehouse full of food into hope on somebody’s table.

Give today — help keep the trucks moving and the last mile covered.

Hunger Action Month is powered by Wonder through the Grubhub Community Fund.

Transcript:

[Ron] We have the largest distribution network in New York.

[Warehouse Professional] Carrots and cabbage are our last two.

[Ron] Our number one standard is making sure that we care.

[Warehouse Professional] These look good. I like that.

[Ron] That we do everything with a sense of kindness.

[Warehouse Professional] Keep up the good work.

[Ron] That is the standard by which we abide.

[Warehouse Professional] That’s what I’m talking about.

[Ron] The transportation piece is the part that actually makes the magic happen.

The part that allows all this planning and preparation to come to fruition.

We have over 40 trucks, and we have over 40 drivers.

[Deb] How are you guys today?

[Ron] They show up every day, and they show up with smiles on their faces.

[Warehouse Professional] Have a safe trip.

[Deb] Thank you.

I find my job very rewarding.

I love what I do.

Go on and head out.

I love knowing that I’m helping people.

[Ron] Our drivers are modern-day heroes.

All of our trucks are equipped with state-of-the-art tracking components, which allow us to see where our trucks are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going in real time.

In addition, they have cameras and environmental monitors so that we make sure freezer and cooler items are maintained at the right temperature, and it’s being logged every minute of the day.

Making sure that the food is within the right temperature parameters is extremely important because if the food spoils, people don’t eat.

[Deb] Yeah. I love hitting the road.

My dad used to drive school buses, so he used to bring me with him all the time.

So I think being in such big vehicles, I just felt comfortable.

We can average about six to eight stops on a truck.

[Ron] Sometimes they’re out on the road before the sun even comes out.

[Deb] So we deliver to the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island.

It’s never a dull moment in the five boroughs.

[Ron] What makes New York City a difficult city to navigate is that the map of New York City was built almost 150 years ago.

[Deb] And this is a 26-foot box truck.

So when you’re trying to maneuver through New York City streets, it’s not always that easy.

[Ron] Time is of the essence.

Heavy traffic is something that they face on a daily basis.

[Deb] It can be a little bit of pressure.

[Ron] If we’re late, then that means that someone may not be able to get the food in time.

If they don’t get the food in time, then that means that some little boy or girl may not be having dinner that night.

[Deb] That is my why.

[Ron] They sacrifice a lot of their time throughout the day because they work long hours, and they never complain about it.

They’re very eager to help others because some of our drivers understand what it means to experience hunger, and they also understand what it means to help fill in the gap.

[Deb] Food insecurity, for me, hits home.

It’s a feeling of the unknown because you don’t know when your next meal is going to be.

When you know firsthand, it does give a different perspective, and it drives you to know that you’re doing something for someone so they don’t feel how you felt when you didn’t have anything.

[Ron] I would definitely say that the thing I’m most proud of when it comes to the transportation department is how we’ve grown.

We used to outsource to a third-party logistics team that would make the deliveries on our behalf.

What we decided as an organization is that we were going to bring everything in-house.

Being able to be more hands-on with the operation and having control has been transformational for this organization.

The most important thing that I think our drivers are delivering is happiness.

It’s hard to be happy when you’re hungry.

[Deb] Here we have people waiting in line for the food that we’re about to deliver.

[Ron] The sheer amount of volume that we can actually put out and the number of people that we can feed absolutely makes us a worthy cause.

[Warehouse Professional] It looks amazing. I can see it from here.

[Ron] What it takes to actually deliver the food that we receive takes real dollars that we need to utilize in order to bridge that gap for New Yorkers.

The impact of donor dollars for us on the transportation side is huge.

[Warehouse Professional] Alright. Push it.

[Ron] Without them, we wouldn’t exist.

It would be impossible to complete our mission.

Transportation is the last mile.

[Deb] We’re delivering more than just food.

We’re delivering hope.

[Ron] Bridging the gaps between those that have and those that don’t.