DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – The With God’s Grace food pantry truck delivered 2.9 million pounds of food to the Miami Valley last year.
Delivering that amount of items to that many places can wear down any truck. The trucks at With God’s Grace have had a uniquely hard year.
One of their delivery trucks had a broken hose, cracked frames, cracked glass, was rusted-over and in desperate need of replacement. On Memorial Day, tornadoes swept up their second truck and slammed it down away from where it had been parked.
With the aid of community and business donations, With God’s Grace purchased a newer 26 foot boxed refrigeration truck for $52,000.
“The truck is used for our mobile locations,” said Nicole Adkins, the executive director of With God’s Grace. “It is to be able to provide fresh produce, meats, dairy and other nonperishable food items. Plus, we use it to pick up donations”
The food pantry delivers food to multiple locations across the area and helps feed over 1000 families every week in the Miami Valley.
“The old truck we had for almost three years,” Adkins said. “There’s a lot of stress on our trucks when we’re hauling so much food. It’s just time to retire the truck. Now we got a new one that we’re able to provide what the community needs and to be able to get more products at our mobile locations for them.”
In the WDTN.com Web Exclusive below, you can see the wear and tear taken by the food pantry’s previous truck:
The new truck has several features that were not included on the models the pantry previously owned.
The major change for the pantry is the refrigeration unit included in the truck. The refrigeration will allow them to transport more fresh produce, meats, dairy, and frozen goods; something they were unable to do previously.
“We had a lot of problems trying to keep the food cold,” Adkins said.
The new truck is also larger and will be able to hold more supplies per trip. Workers at the pantry said the older truck’s loading ramp was also crooked and difficult to manage.
The company hopes to still be able to use the older truck that was damaged in the tornado.
“That truck was totaled out by insurance,” Adkins said. “We’re in the process of trying to fix it back up to make it a backup truck.”
The food pantry is happy the new truck will allow them to service the community better. They said that in the aftermath of the Memorial tornadoes the need is greater than ever.
“There is so much demand for food,” Adkins said. “Knowing that the community is here to be able to help us provide for those families is more than we could ever ask for.”
For photos of the new truck, view the WDTN.com Web Exclusive photo gallery below:
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