Duluth Superior Transportation Association kicks off annual food drive for summer
Summer leaves many schoolchildren without meals, and the Duluth Superior Transportation Association’s drive sent food and cash to Super One sites across the Twin Ports.
When school cafeterias close for the summer, the gap is immediate for many families in St. Louis County and across the Northland. The Duluth Superior Transportation Association leaned into that need with its annual Fill-a-Truck Food and Fund Drive, collecting donations for Second Harvest Northland to help carry families through the months when school breakfast and lunch are no longer available.
The drive ran Thursday through Saturday at Super One locations including Miller Hill, Harbor View, Cloquet, Duluth Lakeside, West Duluth, Oakes Ave Superior, Duluth Plaza, Duluth Kenwood, Two Harbors and Pike Lake. Organizers asked for both food and money, giving residents a chance to drop off nonperishable items and make cash donations at several Twin Ports sites instead of relying on a single stop.
Richie Rochel of Halvor Lines said becoming a parent of a kindergartner changed the way he saw summer hunger, opening his eyes to how some children may not have enough to eat once school is out. That personal connection has helped give the fundraiser its staying power, turning the drive into a practical response to a problem that comes back every year when classrooms empty out and meal programs pause.
Shaye Moris, president and CEO of Second Harvest Northland, said the Duluth Superior Transportation Association has been a steady partner over the years and that the timing of the drive matters. Second Harvest Northland works to end hunger in northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin through dignified and equitable food access for families, children and seniors, and it says the need is already large: nearly 600 people a day receive food from a Northland food shelf or soup kitchen, one in 6 Northland children are food insecure, and about 70,000 children, seniors and adults across 15 counties face food insecurity.
The food bank’s network stretches far beyond one donation table. Second Harvest Northland says it serves roughly 113 agency and community partners and about 268 programs, and its long partnership with Super One Foods spans more than three decades. Store donations, sponsorships and in-kind support help provide more than 440,000 meals each year. In that context, the Fill-a-Truck drive is less a ceremonial event than a local link in a larger hunger-relief system built around grocery stores, transportation companies and regional food shelves working together to keep summer from becoming the hungriest season of the year.
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