For some time, I have been interested in how Meals on Wheels works. This is possibly because several of the people in our music groups work as delivery drivers for the organisation. As well as that, the distribution centre for the organisation in Gayndah is at the local race course which is just up the road from our house.
We’ve had the opportunity to have answers to these questions last week and for the next couple of weeks when the lady (Lyn) who normally runs the distribution side of MOW in Gayndah is on leave. She took a couple of week off to take part in the annual ShitBox Rally. As can be seen from the website, one only has to have a shitbox car worth under $1500 (I guess that is AU) and have an interest in fund raising to enter.
She has an old Hyundai Getz. It didn’t sound too pleased about the outback journey it was about to take when Lyn was at out place the night prior to leaving. She had to drive to Mildura on the NSW/VIC border prior to even starting the rally.
As a result of all of this, in the very short term, Lorraine was hired to take Lyn’s place for the couple of weeks she was away. I am along for the ride. So the process goes like this.
It seems the meals are produced somewhere in Brisbane or the Gold Coast, shipped to Gayndah and stored in freezers situated in one of the buildings at the Gayndah Race Course.
Our job is to arrive at the facility at about 8am each Monday, Wednesday and Friday to prepare the insulated bags which the volunteer drivers will take out to the clients. The clients order and pay for their meals on line and QMOW (Queensland Meals on Wheels) provide a list of what meals have to go to what client on what day. They may pre-order a soup, a main meal and/or a sweet.
STEP 1
Assemble the insulated bags for those who are receiving a meal that day. That information is supplied by QMOW.
Step 2
Check the run sheet for each client. Lorraine does that and then checks that I have found the correct product from the freezer. In most cases, the correct product is available but if it is not we substitute something we think is similar.
Step 3
After all the client’s requests are assembled in the insulated bag, the contents are then surrounded with frozen sheets to ensure that they don’t thaw out during delivery.
Step 4
Once all of the contents are checked, the insulated bags closed and placed in a fridge to await the arrival of the volunteer delivery. The volunteers are not permitted to do their job alone, there must be two of them for each delivery. They do not have to collect any money, that is all done online by QMOW.
Step 5
Once the bags are out in the delivery vehicle, there is not much to do at the centre until the bags come back. They are then assembled on the table and have to be sanitised ready for the next delivery. So the frozen sheets are wiped over with with a sanitising cloth and the bags are sprayed with GLEN 20 to do that trick on them.
As a result of our interest in the Gayndah operation, we decided yo visit the Bundaberg Meals on Wheels when we were in Bundaberg last week. A somewhat different operation to the one in Gayndah (they appear to prepare their meals in Bundaberg) but the result is very similar. We bought a couple of meals to try out their products.