Southeastern Credit Union announced its annual Fill-A-Truck food drive to feed the less fortunate ended successfully.  For the fourth straight year, the community has joined together in an effort to “fill a truck” with food donations and cash, and as a result, Southeastern Credit Union has again fulfilled its promise to donate a second truck if the community succeeding in the challenge of filling the first truck. 

Commenting on the drive this year, President and CEO Mike Gudely said, “This is a great event because of the people of South Georgia.  The credit union is the catalyst, but without significant community involvement, it would not be successful”.  Gudely further stated, “this was a difficult year with so many hurricanes and fund raising relief activities, many were not able to give to Fill-A-Truck as they have in the past.”
 
Southeastern reported an equivalent total of 57,600 lbs of food based on total donations.  Last year, the credit union raised over 76,000 lbs based on total donations.  Southeastern pointed to Wild Adventures and its annual support of the food drive as a primary reason for its success.  The theme park, with its Labor Day special for park guests who bring food items, raised a record for their location of over 3,900 lbs of food.  Gudely praised the theme park saying, “Wild Adventures does such a great job with this and they are annually the largest food collection location for this event.”
 
Other large community supporters included Cook County Ford, Langdale Honda-Kia, and Imperial Auto Sales.  Media sponsors of the month-long campaign were radio stations 95.7 The Mix and Star 105.3 as well as Fairway Outdoor.   Numerous organizations joined in this year’s Fill-a-Truck a success including the Pine Grove Middle School Community Club, Greenleaf, Georgia Christian School and South Georgia Regional Library System.

This year, as in past years, food items were donated to Second Harvest of S. Georgia.  However, rather than provide all donations to Second Harvest, the credit union elected to donate a large portion of the food and cash resources to local organizations that provide meals.  For the Fill-A-Truck Food Drive these included Lowndes Area Ministries for People, The Soup Kitchen (Valdosta), The Caring Place (Nashville), Tiftarea Community Food Bank (Tifton),and Concerted Services of (Waycross).  Mike Gudely acknowledged there are many deserving organizations that do great work in the community saying, “there are churches and other organizations that provide meals for people. We tried to donate to organizations that serve food on a regular basis, rather than once or twice a month.”