Bendigo Foodshare simply could not operate without our four vehicles. As we say they are “powered by our community”.
They all play a major role each and every day to provide food to the community. All four vehicles have different responsibilities, each as important as the other. Collectively the vehicles average 2000 km each week.
Without our volunteer support the vehicles just wouldn’t be able to operate. Combined the vehicles have roughly 20 pairs of volunteers, that’s 40 individual volunteers each week.
Our truck
Our new refrigerated truck was added to our fleet at the start of 2024. The purchase of our new small truck was made possible through funding from Bendigo Bank’s Community Enterprize Foundation’s Flood Recovery Grants Program, The Australian Lions Foundation and the City of Greater Bendigo. Read more here.
Now our biggest vehicle, the truck can transport up to 3.5 tonnes at a time, allowing us to carry six pallets of food. Due to the capacity of the truck it now does most of our out of town deliveries and collection of food donations from local manufacturers, allowing us to be more efficient. It visits much of central Victoria and surrounds, including Kyneton, Echuca, Maryborough, Kyabram, Beaufort and many towns in between.
The new truck significantly improves our capacity to distribute food across our region, particularly when a disaster hits.
Goldy
Goldy is our newest van, purchased in October of 2020. Goldy is named as such because Agnico Eagle Australia’s Fosterville Gold Mine is a major supporter of our new build, continually helping us support the community. In 2023 Fosterville Gold Mine donated $20,000 to help with the rising costs of distributing food across Victoria.
Goldy’s main role is to rescue food from supermarkets 6 days/week and bring it back to our warehouse in Long Gully, where it gets sorted. Goldy does 52 food rescues and averages 500 km each week with 6-7 sets of drivers.
Between busy supermarket rescues Goldy finds time to do some local client deliveries and pickups as well as retrieving stock from our storage locations.
Agnico Eagle Australia is a major financial supporter of Bendigo Foodshare, assisting with the build of our new home.
Benny
Meet Benny, short for Bendigo. Benny is sponsored by many businesses of Bendigo and is dressed with around 25 of their logos. Benny is our oldest van and was purchased in January 2015 after the van we were loaned from Foodbank Victoria met with the end of its life.
Benny is our largest van and can comfortably fit 3 pallets of food. Because of his size, he used to do 85% of our out-of-town deliveries; now he does the majority of the large local deliveries to our Food Partners based in the Greater Bendigo Region, proudly advertising the local supporting organisations along the way. Benny also does some of the bigger pickups from our donors.
Chook
Chook was purchased in January 2018. Chook obtained its name due to the continued support we receive from Hazeldene’s farm through both sponsorship and donations. Thanks Hazeldene’s!
Chook rescues food from supermarkets 6 days each week, averaging 45 rescues and 500km/week. Chook also does a considerable amount of deliveries to local partner organisations. Similar to Goldy, Chook also does some local pickups from partners and storage locations, when needed.
Hazeldene’s is a major financial supporter of Bendigo Foodshare, assisting with the build of our new home.