Delivering Food to the Rural Poor with a Rolling Food Bank

In Sumter County, the West Alabama Food Bank uses a fleet of refrigerated trucks to bring food to the rural poor. Despite stereotypes, rural poverty rates are worse than urban rates in the United States.

Serving this population means being able to get food to the people who need it, sometimes over long distances. West Alabama Food Pantry will retrofit commercial vehicles to serve its produce to the surrounding area, "Its cargo includes some 5,000 pounds of food — boxes of bread, fruits, vegetables, drinks and pastries that it will deliver to dozens of people in rural Alabama, many of them poor," reports Elaine S. Povich. Delivering to homes has some challenges that working at a commercial scale does not. For instance, for many, to carry the food from the curb they need a wheelbarrow, dolly or, in one case, a wheelchair.