Decatur County School Nutrition recently acquired a new delivery truck to better serve students and teachers. 
“It’ll be here a long time,” said Program Director Nita Floyd. “It’ll be here even after I’m gone.”
The previous truck has served Decatur County Schools since 1997, and the need to update was apparent.
“I’ve been here 22 years, so it was here when I got here,” said Floyd. “It has seen its day.”
Floyd remarked that the new vehicle was funded by the students, as it came straight out of the School Nutrition funding.
“It was $137,000,” stated Floyd. “We paid for it with the school nutrition funds, which is the students eating and us being reimbursed.”
The timeline for acquiring a new vehicle suffered due to COVID, and the process took almost a year and a half from start to finish.
“We actually started the search about January 2021,” said Floyd. “And then, you know, with COVID, it was a little crazy.” Floyd went on to explain that the refrigerated unit was on backorder for about six months, and construction of the truck didn’t begin until March. “So we just got it a few weeks ago.”
Due to the size of the previous truck, deliveries took longer than necessary, but the arrival of the new truck meant less time dedicated to transportation. 
“Our old truck would only hold six pallets,” said Floyd. “ Because we merged schools, the orders are bigger so we were having to make one to two trips instead of just the one trip.”
Retiring the old truck from deliveries freed it up to be used to serve the schools in other ways, such as maintenance, and act as a backup for the new truck. 
“We’re keeping it because we use it for janitorial,” said Floyd, “or if my regular delivery guy is on a delivery and someone calls and needs something, the warehouse manager can take the old truck and go do what needs to be done.” 
The truck is ready to serve and supply Decatur County schools.