Gold Star Foods praises PacLease, Peterbilt

When large restaurants and cafeterias prepare meals each day, they often have large pantries, coolers, or freezers from which to pull the ingredients they need. But when cafeteria workers prepare meals at the more than 350 public school districts to which Gold Star Foods deliver in the southwestern United States, they often don’t have that luxury, said Greg Johnson, chief financial officer for Gold Star Foods.

Space is often at a premium at schools, particularly those in the more populated areas of Southern California, Johnson said. Many schools were built in a different era, when there were no breakfast and lunch programs or different approaches to providing school nutrition.

Since most schools don’t have warehouses, large pantries, coolers, or freezers to store supplies, cafeteria workers must prepare and serve meals using fresh produce, frozen foods, breads and other cafeteria supplies delivered that day by Ontario CA-based distributor Gold Star Foods. The distributor must be able to rely on its fleet of trucks to make those deliveries. That’s why it has increasingly turned to Paccar Leasing (PacLease) and its local PacLease franchise, Rush Truck Leasing in Fontana CA, to provide it with new trucks to use in its delivery fleet.

Gold Star Foods is adding 27 new Peterbilt full-service lease straight trucks and 10 new Peterbilt full-service tractors from PacLease, of which 25 have been delivered.

Of the 25 units that have been delivered, 15 are single drive-axle Peterbilt Model 337s equipped with Paccar PX-8 engines; nine are tandem-axle Peterbilt Model 386 tractors with Cummins ISX engines, 10-speed manual Fuller transmissions, 48-inch sleepers, and 40,000-pound rear suspensions; and one is a single drive-axle Peterbilt Model 384 tractor with a Cummins ISX engine and 10-speed Fuller transmission.

The Peterbilt Model 337s are Class 7 trucks equipped with 21,000-lb rear suspensions and provide 660 ft-lbs of torque powered through six-speed Fuller automated manual transmissions. Their 24½-foot van bodies are equipped with Maxon liftgate/ramp combinations for loading and unloading.

Specifications on the straight trucks and tractors were developed by PacLease to maximize fuel efficiency, payload, and driver comfort. But just as important is the reliability that the trucks offer and the service that Rush Truck Leasing provides with the trucks to keep them going, Johnson said.

In some school districts, like the Los Angeles Unified School District, school cafeterias have become a key influence on the nutrition that children receive. According to school officials, 80% of the students, or about 500,000, who attend Los Angeles schools are eligible for free and reduced-price meals. A lack of grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods makes access to nutritional foods at local schools even more critical, they say.

This year the Los Angeles Unified School District adopted a new menu, in which traditional school lunch fare has been switched out for more meals with an emphasis on using fresh produce. To accomplish this, the district has contracted with Gold Star Foods to deliver fresh produce to the schools.

That’s why Gold Star Foods looked carefully at full-service leasing proposals from four providers, including one from PacLease and one from its previous leasing provider, which Gold Star had been doing business with for 20 years. Johnson said he could hardly believe it when he found out that his company could lease Peterbilt trucks for less than what it was experiencing with its other provider.

Johnson said it was Rush Truck Leasing’s approach to customer-oriented maintenance that helped convince company executives that PacLease was the leasing provider to choose.

“Rush Truck Leasing developed an on-site maintenance plan that would proactively keep downtime to a minimum,” he said. “They made specification recommendations that maximized our productivity. Plus, the service and lease sales teams really took a much more collaborative approach in developing a full-service leasing plan for our company. They took a much more entrepreneurial approach that wasn’t just about the sale. It’s that out-of-the-box thinking that clearly impressed us.”

Johnson said his company chooses full-service leasing instead of purchasing because it helps conserve capital resources for other projects like the recent construction of its new main warehouse in Ontario, which uses the latest in energy-efficient technology. The warehouse, which was designed to exceed state standards for energy efficiency, has a refrigerated dock, 117,000 square feet of energy-efficient refrigerated space, and more than 81,000 square feet of freezer space.

Full-service leasing also allows Gold Star Foods to concentrate on its expertise, delivering food and cafeteria supplies timely and cost-effectively.