Every year, Troop 581 orchestrates its primary fundraiser of the year – mulch sales. It starts in January, soon after the holidays when our Scouts canvas the whole area, going door-to-door to sell as many bags of brown, black and red mulch as possible. It’s a great deal for customers because not only do they get the mulch at a great price, the troop will deliver it right to their house free of charge!
The highlight of this effort is Mulch Madness, held this year on the weekend of 8-10 March. The troop came together to receive, organize and deliver over 12,000 bags of mulch. This was a Herculean effort that involved renting flatbed delivery trucks and forklifts, training drivers, receiving of multiple semi-trucks loaded with pallets of mulch, orchestrating delivery schedules and crews, loading delivery trucks, the care and feeding of all involved, and the generosity of Gainesville United Methodist Church for allowing us to take over the church and its parking lot for the weekend.
It started on Friday with the delivery of the mulch by the source vendor to the church. These deliveries came in on flatbed semi-trailers, mostly during the all-day snow showers. The yard crew worked all day to offload and organize the mulch which filled up most of the parking lot. By Friday afternoon, the troop started to make the first deliveries. Volunteer Scouts came right after school and were immediately placed in delivery crews. Each crew was led by the delivery truck driver and included chase car drivers and a whole bunch of Scouts.
The central hub for Mulch Madness was the church gym. Here, organizers worked all weekend to plan each delivery run to ensure each customer received the proper order. Each run was crafted to deliver mulch to as many customers as close to each other as possible. The driver worked with the dispatch team to get the proper delivery run and coordinated with the yard crew to make sure his truck was properly loaded.
Because of the dangerous nature of the work, the yard crew consisted of half a dozen adult volunteers who spent all weekend driving forklifts, climbing on trucks and manhandling load straps to get the trucks ready for delivery. Each time a delivery run was planned out, the details were provided to the yard crew. The yard chief used those details to plan the proper load. The crews then manned the forklifts to load the truck with the proper amount of each kind of mulch, in the proper order. Crew members then securely strapped the truck’s load so that it didn’t spill while on the road. Finally, the yard crew inspected each truck with its driver before it was sent off to make its delivery.
Delivery crews do the heavy lifting while on runs (pun intended). They stopped at each customer’s house and then manually pulled bags of mulch off the trucks and placed them wherever the customer wanted them. While the crews didn’t spread the mulch, they did provide each customer with a form to get their mulch spread at a later date. Considering that each truck might carry as much as 480 bags of mulch, you can imagine the hard work that went into these deliveries. Some Scouts were on as many as 7 delivery runs just on Saturday.
While the yard crew was made up of adults, some of our newest Scout volunteers also served an important role in the yard. Whenever a truck returned from a delivery run, it was usually covered with trash, empty pallets, loose mulch and tangled straps. These young Scouts quickly cleaned off the truck bed so that the yard crew could start reloading it for the next run. This ensured that there was a steady flow of trucks coming and going from the church.
Another critical part of Mulch Madness is the work that goes into feeding all the volunteers. Troop families donated food and drinks for the weekend. We also had several volunteers that made sure all of the food, drinks, snacks and coffee were served throughout the day. They also organized cleanup crews to make sure the gym was kept clean, no small task. Delivering mulch makes a Scout hungry and delivery crews were coming and going all day so we can’t stress enough how important this effort was.
Through the hard work of everyone involved, the troop delivered over 12,000 bags of mulch. The funds raised by these sales helps the troop to do all the fun events that it plans throughout the year. Fishing in April, canoeing in May, summer camp and high adventure, camping, hiking, ski trips, etc. – none of this could happen if it weren’t for all the hard work put in by the troop for mulch sales.
Submitted by Erik Weaver, Assistant Scoutmaster