They get over 3M pounds of food to Bucks County needy families. New truck could mean more

The Bucks County Opportunity Council celebrated the arrival a new truck that will help the nonprofit expand its efforts to distribute food to individuals and families in need.

On Monday morning, the shiny new addition to the fleet was parked outside of BCOC’s Doylestown office, standing as a tall reminder of how far the anti-poverty agency has come in its mission to tackle food insecurity.

“Over the past 10 years our food program has grown significantly,” said Joe Cuozzo, the director of development for BCOC.

“We had one old van and a bunch of volunteers, and now we have 7 or 8 employees part time, three vans and three trucks. Last year, we moved 3.3 million pounds of food for the people who need it. This truck will help us do a lot more.”

The refrigerated truck, equipped with a powered lift gate, is capable of transporting 10 pallets, which equates to about 15,000 more pounds of food the nonprofit will be able to distribute, said Elizabeth Zbinden, BCOC’s food program manager.

“We’re very happy to now have a third truck because we were often coming up with scheduling conflicts with getting trucks out into the field because they were already out, but we had other pickups that needed to be completed. So having this means we can definitely expand what we’re doing,” Zbinden said.

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One of the key initiatives to benefit from the new truck is BCOC’s Retail Rescue, said Heather Foor, BCOC’s director of client services, through which the nonprofit partners with local grocery stores, redistributing surplus food to 75 food pantries across Bucks County.

“It was a goal for us in our food program to really expand our retail rescue operations because many pantries in the county don’t have their own transportation, and they’re missing out on those opportunities. And so, by us having this truck we can get the food out to those pantries that don’t have the transportation to do pick-ups themselves,” Foor said, noting it will also aid in redistributing food that comes into BCOC’s HELP Center.

The $165,000 truck was fully funded by the American Rescue Plan Act grants through Bucks County government. St. Mary Medical Center in Middletown also provided a grant to fund the wrapping of the truck and a new pallet jack to assist in the loading and unloading of food.

Reporter Michele Haddon covers local news, small business, food and drink, economic revitalization, art and culture for The Intelligencer and Bucks County Courier Times at PhillyBurbs.com. Please consider supporting local journalism with a subscription.