Let the ale flow for St. Patrick's — and it's the trucks that get it there

A surge of beer and wine delivery runs takes place to provide merriment for St. Patrick's Day.

March 16, 2018

2 min read

If the beverage trucks don't ship, the green-dyed beer would get no sips; untended bars would claim no tips. And we can't have that on St. Patrick's Day, can we?

No indeed. According to data from Verizon Connect, beer delivery trucks cover more than 4.7 million miles in March, with nearly 314,000 trips made for consumers to celebrate this holiday.

It's not surprising. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 32.3 million U.S. residents claim Irish ancestry — that's 10% of the U.S. population, or five times the roughly 6.6 million people living on the island of Ireland. More than 15% of residents in the U.S. Northeast claim Irish heritage.

Tomorrow being St. Patrick's Day, Verizon Connect examined the amount of deliveries and miles driven across the United States to determine which region and states have the highest beer and wine delivery demand in March. The data matches up with the population concentration: it's the New England states.

There are more than 340 breweries in those states, and not only do they have the most Irish ancestry, they also have the highest number of beer and wine deliveries this month. The Pacific region, meanwhile, has the least (boo).

Maine, which boasts more than 90 active breweries, has both the longest daily beer delivery distance and driving hours for the year, according to Verizon Connect, and Connecticut and Massachusetts follow closely behind.

As far as cities go, fleet delivery trucks make almost 50% more trips in Milwaukee than any other beer-producing city in the country, Verizon Connect found. Fleet trucks there covered the most miles in March (2,476), followed by Denver (2,336), Boston (1,664) and Portland, OR (1,594).

Verizon Connect is the newly launched fleet/ mobile workforce management software company that combined Verizon Telematics, Telogis and Fleetmatics. Verizon Connect was also announced last week as the software partner in the factory-installed telematics option that will be offered on Ram commercial vehicles.