Before purchasing and converting what has become known as the Grouch-mobile, I had to make a decision wether to get truck or a trailer. Now the trucks have some definite advantages:
- They are easier to get around town with and easier to park.
- They have more room inside of them.
- They are ready made to pass a health inspection.
- They are always ready to go, no hooking up to another vehicle.
However I chose to go with a trailer for a number of reasons:
- I’m able to drop the trailer and leave it at a location
- I always have a vehicle with me that I can make supply runs or other errands with
- If the Tahoe that I use to tow the trailer with breaks down, I just rent/borrow/steal another truck to use instead (try that with a food truck)
- I have extra room to keep supplies and equipment
Case in point. The other day we we’re setting up at a property to serve for lunch when the water pump for the sinks stopped working. I’m not sure about the food trucks, but without water we can not operate as we can not clean and rinse any of utensils, blender containers, steam pitchers, etc. that we use to make the drinks. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to make your drink from a dirty container. So in true “never say die” fashion we decided it would be better to be partially functional they have to shut down all the way. We did that by swapping out the external water pump on the espresso machine with the broken one for the sinks. This allowed us to use the sinks but not the espresso machine which for a purveyor of gourmet espresso is not a good thing. And this is where having a trailer came in handy; I was able to take the Tahoe to go get a brand new water pump from an RV store close by and swap it out within an hour. Now if I was on a Truck I would have had to drive to the RV store in the Truck, thereby shutting down for the time it took to drive there and back and swap out the water pump. With the trailer and the Tahoe we did not miss a single order that day.
