THEODORE, Ala. — The tractor-trailers that Feeding the Gulf Coast runs across three states are the part of the operation almost nobody thinks about, and right now they are the part costing the food bank the most.
Diesel prices have climbed roughly 60% over the past year, and for an organization whose entire model depends on moving heavy pallets long distances, that is not a line-item problem. It is a capacity problem.
“With diesel costs up at the moment, year over year, we have about a 60% increase,” President and CEO Michael Ledger said. “That has a significant impact on what we’re spending on diesel which has a significant impact on what we can do in the way of helping people.”
Ledger put a number on it. The increase translates to more than $120,000 in additional fuel costs — money that would otherwise have gone into food.
“Due to the increased cost, we’re looking at over $120,000 of increased fuel costs. That’s something like 600-700,000 meals we may not be able to serve because of that increase,” he said.
The Math Behind the Miles
The scale of Feeding the Gulf Coast’s territory explains why fuel bites so hard.
The nonprofit covers 22,000 square miles and drives more than 370,000 miles a year to get food where it is needed. That is a service area covering more than 40% of Alabama’s land area, and the annual mileage is the equivalent of circling the Earth about 15 times.
Last year the organization moved more than 45 million pounds of food, which Ledger says works out to about 37 million meals. He said the goal this year is to meet or beat that figure, which is a harder target when a larger share of every dollar is burned getting the truck to the destination.
Feeding the Gulf Coast is headquartered in Theodore, with branch facilities in Milton, Florida, and Gulfport, Mississippi. It serves 24 counties across Alabama, Florida and Mississippi, and it is a partner food bank in the national Feeding America network. The organization was formerly known as the Bay Area Food Bank.
How a Regional Food Bank Actually Gets Food to People
A food bank is not a pantry. The distinction matters for understanding why diesel is a core expense rather than an incidental one.
Feeding the Gulf Coast functions as a warehouse and logistics hub. It acquires food at volume from several streams: donated product from manufacturers, growers and distributors; retail rescue, in which grocery stores hand off items nearing their sell-by dates; federal commodities distributed through USDA programs such as The Emergency Food Assistance Program; and food the organization buys outright when donations do not cover a gap, which increasingly they do not.
That product then has to reach people, and the food bank generally does not hand it out itself. It moves through a network of partner agencies — church pantries, community centers, soup kitchens, shelters and similar nonprofits, which handle the direct distribution in their own neighborhoods. The organization reported distributing 37 million meals through more than 800 community partners in 2025. Alongside that agency network, food banks typically run their own direct programs as well: mobile pantries that set up in communities with no brick-and-mortar option, weekend backpack and school pantry programs for students, and senior box programs.
Every one of those links is a truck trip. A rural pantry two hours from Theodore does not have a loading dock, a forklift or a refrigerated trailer; the food bank brings the pallet. Much of the highest-value inventory — produce, dairy, meat — requires refrigeration the entire way, which means running reefer units that burn fuel independently of the engine.
When fuel costs jump, a food bank cannot simply drive less without distributing less. There is no substitution available.
Why Diesel Hits Harder Than Gasoline
Diesel has been the sharper edge of fuel costs on the Gulf Coast, and Feeding the Gulf Coast is far from the only local operation feeling it.
South Alabama News reported on Sept. 7 that U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl pressed the oil industry over pricing as Alabama diesel reached $5.85 a gallon. Days later, on Sept. 10, this outlet reported on an Atmore trucker spending $3,000 a week on fuel before making a dollar of profit.
The common thread is that heavy-duty operators have almost no ability to adapt. A household facing high gasoline prices can consolidate errands or drive less. A tractor-trailer hauling a full load of food from a warehouse to a county pantry has a fixed route and a fixed load, and the only variable is what the fuel costs at the pump. For a nonprofit, that cost cannot be passed along to a customer, because there is no customer. It comes out of the mission.
SNAP Changes Are Pushing More People Toward Pantries
The cost pressure is arriving at the same moment demand is rising, and Ledger points to changes in SNAP eligibility as a driver.
“In Alabama, we’re looking at over 80,000 people, in Florida, well over 500,000 people who are showing up at our pantries looking for help. And that’s in addition to all the folks we’re seeing already because of food insecurity before that,” Ledger said.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is the country’s largest anti-hunger program. It is funded federally through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered state by state — in Alabama, by the Department of Human Resources — with benefits loaded monthly onto an EBT card that works like a debit card at authorized grocers.
Eligibility turns primarily on household income and size, with additional rules for assets and for certain categories of recipients. The most consequential of those categories is the one abbreviated ABAWD: able-bodied adults without dependents. Adults in that group can receive SNAP for only three months in any 36-month period unless they meet a work, training or volunteer requirement, generally 20 hours a week.
Federal legislation enacted in 2025 substantially widened who that requirement applies to. Key changes include:
- Raising the upper age for work requirements from 54 to 64, pulling older adults without dependents into the time limit for the first time.
- Narrowing exemptions that had covered veterans, people experiencing homelessness and young adults aging out of foster care.
- Applying work requirements to parents whose youngest child is 14 or older, where previously having a dependent child provided an exemption.
- Tightening the circumstances under which states can request waivers from the time limit, restricting them largely to areas with unemployment above 10%.
The practical effect of a time limit is not gradual. A household either has benefits or does not, and when a case closes, the gap shows up immediately at the nearest pantry.
That is the structural problem behind Ledger’s numbers. The charitable food network and SNAP are not interchangeable systems operating at the same scale. SNAP dollars flow directly to households and are spent in ordinary grocery stores; the food bank network operates on donated and purchased bulk product moved by truck. When federal benefits contract, the demand does not disappear — it transfers to a smaller system that has to physically drive every replacement meal to the person who needs it.
Every Dollar Has to Go Further
Ledger says the organization is working to match or exceed last year’s 45 million pounds despite the squeeze, but that the arithmetic is unforgiving when more people need help and more money is going into the cost of delivery.
He describes the food bank’s needs in three categories.
“Food, feet and funds is what we always talk about,” Ledger said. “If you’d like to donate we can put those dollars to work, whether it’s buying more diesel, which isn’t flashy, but it makes the food go, or food itself.”
Food means donated product. Feet means volunteers, who sort, repack and staff distributions and whose labor is the reason a food bank can handle volume that would otherwise require paid warehouse staff. Funds means cash, which is the most flexible of the three because it can be directed wherever the shortfall is in a given month — including, this year, into a fuel tank.
What It Means for Gulf Coast Households
For readers in Mobile and Baldwin counties, the effect of a fuel increase at the food bank level is indirect but real. It does not show up as a closed pantry. It shows up as fewer mobile distributions in a given month, smaller allocations to partner agencies, or a pantry running out earlier in the day than it used to.
Ledger’s 600,000-to-700,000-meal estimate is a way of translating an accounting line into that experience. The $120,000 was never going to be spent on overhead in the abstract. It was going to be spent on food.
People who need help locating a pantry, and those who want to volunteer or contribute financially, can find resources and current distribution information through Feeding the Gulf Coast’s website.
Whether diesel prices ease in the months ahead is outside the food bank’s control, as is what happens next with federal food assistance. What Ledger can control is how far each remaining dollar stretches, and that is the calculation his organization is running heading into the busiest stretch of its year.