Failing at your own business-Produce Truck

Produce trucks provide fresh fruit and vegetables to outlying areas.

The next harebrained scheme for making money was a produce truck. My husband bought a 1985 clunker pickup truck. He removed the bed and refitted it with metal bars to hold the crates of fruit and vegetables. We made another trip to Morelia and stocked up on fruits and vegetables. We had carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatillas, onions, garlic, oranges, pears and melons. We had a scale that I had used in the U.S. to weigh things to send through the mail. Ok, so it wasn’t in kilos, but we could approximate right? And some plastic bags.

We started on a Saturday, being payday, and drove through town. We started noticing that most other produce trucks had a sound system announcing their wares. We put that on the ‘to get’ list.

Well, we didn’t do too badly that day, sold some things. We probably acted a bit too grateful and surprised to pass as seasoned sellers, but hey, it was fun and we got to see some places we hadn’t visited before.

Day two, started out well. Then we ran into the ‘federales’ the state police. They wanted their ‘mordida’ or cut of the take. My husband pointed out that we had just started that day and we hadn’t made any money yet, so they accepted 2 bags of tomatoes as payment.

Then day 3 came and the truck broke down. I told you it was a clunker didn’t I? My husband went hitchhiking back to the nearest town to see if he could get a piece for the gas tank or something and left my son and I in the truck, guarding the wares. And would you believe, the ‘federales’ stopped, not to see if we needed assistance, but to see what they could take. I didn’t have any cash and I didn’t feel comfortable enough to even roll down the window to talk to them, so eventually they went away. They must not have gone too far, because when my husband came back, so did they, and picked up a few kilos of fruit for the Mrs. at our expense.

We persevered until the fruit we had bought was either sold or on the point of going bad. We didn’t lose money, but we didn’t make any either. My husband sold the truck.

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