Aging vans threaten Kootenai County food bank’s ability to feed the hungry

The loading bay door rolls up inside the Community Action Partnership food bank warehouse in northwest Coeur d’Alene.

Volunteers spring into action, unloading a van stuffed with donations from Albertsons, Safeway, Fred Meyer, Starbucks, Red Lobster and Davis Donuts. In come boxes of cantaloupe, yams, meats, cereal and bread, graham crackers and more – all perfectly good food diverted from the waste stream to help feed Kootenai County families in need.

To keep this rescue mission going five days a week, the food bank relies on three aging cargo vans – from 16 to 24 years old – and volunteer drivers.

The volunteers are doing fine, but the vans are wearing out. One recently broke down and the agency didn’t have funds to fix it, so a driver paid for the repair work out of his own pocket.

“That’s how desperate we’re getting,” program manager Carolyn Shewfelt said Thursday.

The food bank uses a 1992 Ford van with 209,000 miles on it, a 1997 Astro van with more than 290,000 miles, and a 2000 GMC van with 185,000 miles.

“One should be graduated from college with a family and possibly a new little van of its own, one in college and the last driving on its own,” Shewfelt joked.

Community Action Partnership has raised $50,000 in the past two years to buy two newer vans, including one refrigerated vehicle with a lift gate. One private donor gave the agency $20,000 worth of silver bars to help replace the vans.

But the organization needs at least $30,000 more to make the purchases, Shewfelt said.

“We’re just about there. We thought we had a $20,000 gift coming our way, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen,” she said.

The replacement vans don’t need to be brand new, she added, but do need to be newer and more reliable.

“Just something that’s going to last us a few years,” she said. “It’s not like we’re wanting something with heated seats or anything.”

The delivery vehicles are “the heartbeat of our organization,” transporting surplus dairy products, bread, produce, meats and more five days a week, Shewfelt said.

And that food is the primary source for the food bank’s community market at the front of its busy warehouse at 4144 West Industrial Loop. Income-qualified Kootenai County residents can shop there once a week, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, to supplement their food budget.

In addition, the food bank hands out on average 1,000 emergency food boxes each month. The boxes are loaded with staples and include donated food as well as commodities supplied through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Food Assistance Program. A household can receive an emergency food box up to three times a year.

The food bank also prepares bags of ready-to-eat food for homeless people, handed out each Wednesday at the St. Vincent de Paul Help Center in Coeur d’Alene.

And for Thanksgiving the food bank helps prepare holiday food boxes. Last year, that program served 2,400 families.

The food bank conducts food drives each May and November, but donations have been on the decline, Shewfelt said.

“Sometimes it gets really sparse in here,” especially after Christmas, she said.

The May drive used to bring in about 32,000 pounds of food, but now the organization collects half that much.

“A lot of people are receiving now rather than giving,” Shewfelt said. “It’s a little bit tougher out there.”

She also has noticed that a greater share of donations are expired food items. “People still want to give,” she said, “but they are giving from their pantry rather than a grocery store.”

In addition to the many grocers, bakeries and restaurants that donate expired and nearly expired food, Super 1 Foods in Coeur d’Alene makes up bags of high-demand food items that customers can buy and leave at the store for the food bank to pick up.

“If it wasn’t for them, we’d really be hurting,” Shewfelt said. “This is a lifeline for our food boxes.”