THE DRIVERS TAKE SPRINTER VANS DAILY TO SOME OF THE 600 SCHOOLS, USING ONLY MAPQUEST TO ROUTE. IT’S INEFFICIENT, BUT IT’S FREE.
Kim Aaron describes the funding
uncertainty, “We rely on people to write checks for us to pay the bills, and sud- denly [when a tornado hits] everyone only wants to write a check for disaster. It is like financial disintermediation. Instead of writing their regular check for $50 every month, they write the check and want it to go for disaster. And if they give it to me to spend on disaster, I can’t spend it on anything else. That’s $50 I’ve lost to pay the fuel bill to go to Jonesboro.” Some other challenges non-profits
may face outside of funding is a lack of equipment. The Arkansas Rice Depot distributes food to over 600 schools in their Food for Kids program, which provides food to school-age children who don’t have access to food at home. However, the Depot doesn’t own any routing software. The drivers take sprinter vans daily to some of the 600 schools, using only Mapquest to route. It’s inefficient, but it’s free. Another cost is, of course, the truck
itself. With only bobtrucks or sprinter vans, the banks can deliver nonperish- able products and smaller quantities, but they don’t have their own reefer vans for donated Tyson chicken or per- ishable fruits and vegetables from the state’s Gleaning Project.
THE GLEANING PROJECT The Arkansas Hunger Relief
Alliance began the Gleaning Project three years ago, saving 40,000 lbs. of produce from perishing in Arkansas fields. Now, the Project has gleaned 1.5 million lbs. of cabbage, watermelons, tomatoes, apples, okra, purple hull peas and pears—healthy foods donated by farmers. Volunteers flood a field, pull-
ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT | Issue 5 2014
ing fruits or vegetables right off the vine and loading them onto a truck. The Gleaning Project feeds many mouths, but it’s a logistical feat to pull off each field day. The actual gleaning is intense man-
ual labor, especially when the product is something heavy like watermelons. So the Alliance has enlisted the help of the Arkansas Department of Corrections. When the field is close to a state correc- tional facility, the prisons supply labor and glean the fields. Volunteers also sign up to help glean the fields. Then, there’s the issue of schedul-
ing the gleaning day and transporting the product. They are time-sensitive deliveries because the food needs to be gleaned and on someone’s table before it perishes. Rice says farmers can give notice to prepare a Stallion truck driver to go to the fields, but if the weather doesn’t cooperate, it can’t happen. Then, of course, there is the truck. “When you’ve got 20 truckloads of
tomatoes in South Arkansas that you’ve got to get to Little Rock, you are talking about refrigerated trailers and during the peak season of produce time, not too many people are going to pull off from where they are making their BEST money to donate time. So we are a dry van carrier, but we have 2 refrigerated trailers. That’s what they’re used for- is for the gleaning program. That’s the only reason why I bought them, because it is a struggle to find help. . . . It is going to continue to be a
struggle on the transportation side as long as there is a driver shortage and costs like it is, there is always going to be a struggle. And it is a struggle the whole nation faces,” says Rice.
CULTURE OF GIVING It is a struggle. Yet, with the help
of donors and volunteers—families who volunteer to repackage rice or glean the fields, companies like Stallion who share their trucks or their transporta- tion expertise to move the food—the non-profit organizations find a way to do what for-profit distributors do. Trucking expertise is needed in
order to relieve Arkansas Hunger, Rice says. “That is kind of what drove me to helping the food banks. At the food banks, the people are volunteers, and then the paid staff may be mostly cleri- cal and know nothing about transporta- tion, so we are able to help reduce their costs.” Charity requires giving money and
time, but charity also requires a lot of people with different skills and knowl- edge working together. For Arkansas food banks, trucking expertise is neces- sary to make it all happen. Giving isn’t easy, and after holiday season ends, donations wane. Giving has to be a regular part of the family, a regular part of the company to keep these organiza- tions afloat. The maxim applies, “tis better to
give than receive,” for Rice when he describes a gleaning day that Stallion participated in. “I brought everyone together, to say something, and I started bawling. It’s so amazing to see it work. I wasn’t paying them to be there. It’s part of our culture here. I learned that word, culture, from Steve Williams [of Maverick Transportation]. We are try- ing to create a culture that giving back is good. I don’t want [your] money, I can give the money. I want [your] time. You brought your family to do some- thing good. That’s what we want.”
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