July 13, 2010

100 Mile a distribution centre

By: Ken Alexander — 100 Mile House Free Press

The 100 Mile House Food Bank Society does more than just operate the local food bank.

Society president Bob Hicks says the local food bank serves as one of the four distribution hubs in the province. Two to three truckloads of food from Toronto are dropped off in a month, he adds. “Whenever they get 20 skids, they ship out a load.”

Then the local food bank distributes the skids to Kamloops, Clearwater, Bella Coola, Williams Lake, Quesnel, Prince George, Burns Lake, Hazelton, Kitimat, Terrace, and Prince Rupert.

Companies such as Christie’s and Kraft donate the crates of food, he adds.

“It’s all donated; it don’t cost us nothing. Food Banks Canada even pays for the shipping.”

It comes to 100 Mile House and the local volunteers split it up and distribute it to the other food banks. The local food bank gets to keep 10 per cent of the shipment to help offset the costs of being a hub, Hicks notes.

“When we ship it out, the trucking companies charge the food banks where it’s going $75 a skid, which is a very cheap rate,” he says, adding normally the skid of food is worth up to $4,000.

The local food bank buys vegetables or whatever the local grocers offer during case-lot sales but in significantly larger quantities than a private citizen could purchase. However, they rely heavily on donations.

Pointing to a skid of unlabelled cans of spaghetti, he says Heinz was producing for a company that changed its mind and didn’t want it,

so the food bank ended up with 24 skids of it and distributed to the region’s food banks.

While the society has to pay for a large facility to house the incoming and outgoing skids, it does provide another source of foodstuffs that might not otherwise be available.