Meat from a truck?

I was visiting with a friend yesterday who lives in one of the older neighborhoods by Hounz Ln park. She said in the past month she's twice had someone come to the door in the middle of the day and offer to sell her "quality meats" out of their professional looking refridgerated truck. She thinks they were two different companies.

So - has anyone else heard of this? She didn't buy.

What does she mean by "professional looking" refrigerated truck? If it's a guy in a pickup with a chest deep freezer in the back, tell her to avoid him like the plague! If it's a Schwan's truck, they're legit but, IMHO, over-priced. My parents used to buy from the "Schwan's man" on a regular basis but mostly because my dad was a fool for their Maple Nut ice cream. The Schwan's people, I believe, work entirely on commission and they can be a tad aggressive with their sales techniques.

Schwan's on-line grocery and food delivery service:
http://www.schwans.com/

[Robin Garr]

A guy came around our neighborhood in Crescent Hill making a similar offer the other day. I passed. I would have liked to ask him some questions but decided not to get into it.

I fell into these meat traps years ago. The companies are legit but the products are cryo-vac steaks that have been tenderized with an enzyme. The meat is USDA commercial grade beef, which is about as good as Argentina Roadkill. Generally the steaks are cheap, but you get what you pay for.

To be avoided. What I know of it form a legit food broker that used to store their meat, is that the meat is cheap and cut to look like Filets. As Rick said, tenderized and pounded. The guys that run these outfits are making big money and will do most anything to keep making big money. As for the drivers, they have to sell what they have on the truck that day. No returns to the big man. Very high pressured. Probably a good thing not to question them and get into a "discussion".

I was trying to carry in groceries one day and a guy drove by in one of the trucks w/ the coolers and started yelling to me from the street. He wasn't exactly a great salesman. When I told him I wasn't interested he said "Why not!?" So I just shook my grocery bags at him and said "Just went to the store, DUH!" As you can tell I'm quite gifted in the comeback department.

When I told him I wasn't interested he said "Why not!?"

What an odd way to speak to a potential buyer. Never in the customer service manual for any job does the phrase "Why not?" appear.

When I told him I wasn't interested he said "Why not!?"

What an odd way to speak to a potential buyer. Never in the customer service manual for any job does the phrase "Why not?" appear.

Think of all the sales training it took just to get him to say "Why not? instead of breaking out the brass knuckles.

"Why not?" is also not effective when you're yelling it from the driver's seat of your truck..while it's running..

About a year or so ago my wife some several pounds of frozen meat from some guy off a truck. Let's just say the dogs ate real well for quite some time. Poorly cut, tough, yuck.

Over the years...and in various cities, I've had these kinda folks knock on my door, with more or less the same line...never availed myself of their product. On the other hand, I know of a couple of legitimate gulf coast seafood wholesalers (Joe Patti's seafood in Penscola I believe was one of them) who owned a fleet of refrigerated box trucks. They would load the trucks up and send them on the road to various cities where they would find a parking lot and sell seafood right out of the truck. I don't know that I've ever seen them north of (say) Nashville but if I happened to run across something like that, I'd by from them.

As an aside, we once had some guys come through our neighborhood selling furniture...really nice name brand furniture out of the back of a tractor-trailer. Their story was they were from North Carolina (the truck DID have N.C. plates) and that when they showed up to deliver the furniture to the store, the store was out of business...So their "boss" told them to sell the stuff out of the back of the truck rather than tote it all the way back to N.C. I happened to be financially embarrassed at the time but a few of my neighbors got some really good deals (70-75% below retail) on some really nice stuff. I've always wondered if they were buying part of a hijacked load.

Steve - that story sounds an awful lot like the one the first meat guy gave my friend. He said he went to make a delivery in her neighborhood and the customer's credit card declined (really - because you couldn't have found that out over the phone BEFORE you loaded your truck up with meat).

She declined both times but said to the second guy "I would never buy meat from a truck in front of my house".

There is something decided gross about it, but I can see the seafood trucks. It's the "just caught" thing, but you can "just catch" a cow.