Resting and Refueling

Long before the athletes began to arrive in Salt Lake City, many companies offered services to the Olympic Games by providing food and bedding items. These items – essential to the athletes’ well being – were hauled in by trucks.

Where’s the beef? It was hauled into the city by truck and stored in warehouses until needed. Sysco Intermountain of West Jordan, Utah, has a 385,000-square-foot warehouse where it stores many customers’ products. According to Brian Nuttall, Sysco’s Olympic promotions coordinator, a caterer placed an order with Sysco for the amount and different types of Certified Angus Beef needed to feed the athletes during the Olympics.

Trucks will deliver the beef in stages to the Olympic venues and to the housing area. The deliveries were to begin two weeks prior to the Olympic Games and continue during the first week of the Games. More than eight truckloads of beef are expected to be delivered, totaling 340,000 pounds.

When delivered to the venues, the beef will be stored in refrigerated trailers. Sysco will have 40 refrigerated trailers at the Olympic Games. Different varieties of beef include pot roast, barbeque beef, frankfurters, chili, deli roast beef, pastrami, corned beef, tri tips, flank steak and filet mignon.

Matt Brems of Salt Lake City has driven for Sysco for five years. He says the trailers are loaded when he arrives at the warehouse, but it’s his responsibility to unload the product. Brems is pleased to have delivered food for the athletes and thinks it’s wonderful that Salt Lake City is hosting the Olympics.

“It’s a good thing,” he says. “I’ve never had anything like this happen in my life and have never dealt with the Olympics before. I’ll be there firsthand. It’s exciting.”

Breakfast and bed
Kellogg is an official supplier of breakfast items to the 2002 Olympics. In December, the company began trucking in cereal, Eggo waffles and Pop-Tarts that were donated for the athletes’ use. They will feature eight Olympic hopefuls on more than 75 million packages of Kellogg’s products.

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The company has promoted the Olympics since 1923, and has featured gold medal winners such as Kristi Yamaguchi, Dan Jansen, Bonnie Blair and the U.S. Olympic basketball team on cereal boxes.

Sealy Inc. of Trinity, N.C., shipped 800 queen mattress sets and 6,000 twin sets from its warehouse in Portland, Ore., and 3,000 bed frames from North Carolina, to help the athletes get plenty of rest while participating in the Olympic Games.

According to Tom Tervo, Sealy’s manager of licensing, the company delivered 40 truckloads of bedding and two truckloads of frames. All items were donated to support the Olympic Games.

Coca-Cola is also an official sponsor of the Olympics and donated its product for the athletes. The product was delivered to the venues by truck from Coca-Cola’s local distributor in Draper, Utah, a few weeks prior to the Olympic Games. C.R. England, a trucking company based in Salt Lake City, planned to provide a staging area for Coca-Cola to park its trucks in the company yard.


Beefing Up
A total of 340,000 pounds of beef is being provided for the Olympic athletes.

  • Pot Roast: 45,000 pounds, 1+ truckloads, from RMH Foods in Morton, Ill.
  • BBQ Beef: 45,000 pounds, 1+ truckloads, from W&G Marketing in Ames, Iowa.
  • Frankfurters: 100,000 pounds, 2 1/2 truckloads, from Fred Usinger, Inc. in Milwaukee.
  • Chili: 75,000 pounds, 2 truckloads, from Advance Foods in Enid, Okla.
  • Deli Beef: 75,000 pounds, 2 truckloads, from Levonian Brothers in Troy, N.Y.