It was an early start for me these summer holidays as I headed out one morning on a trucking adventure to find out about the essential job of delivering groceries.

It was well before dawn recently when my alarm went off to wake me up for my next transport adventure. On a trip to the North Island during the summer holidays, John Baillie, an owner-operator for Foodstuffs North Island Limited, invited me to experience a day in his life behind the wheel.

John operates a Volvo FM 460 tractor unit and it tows a 14.1-metre Fairfax refrigerated trailer fitted with a Thermo King refrigerator unit. The trailer can hold 24 standard pallets on the deck, and in some circumstances, the pallets can be doubled up (stacked on top of each other), which allows more to fit. A rear steering axle is fitted to the trailer that helps it manoeuvre through the tight turns often encountered in supermarket car parks.

John is responsible for delivering chilled and frozen food to supermarkets in the Waikato region. We arrived at the Foodstuffs distribution centre in Manukau City at 2am. This is where the truck is based, and where we would be loading our first batch of chilled and frozen food products for the day.

Upon entering the loadout area at the distribution centre the lower temperature inside was very noticeable, with it being consistently kept at +2 degrees Celsius; this is how frozen and refrigerated products are kept fresh before they arrive at supermarkets.

The first part of the load consisted of frozen dairy products and seafood items such as prawns, along with chilled products that needed to be refrigerated such as milk, sour cream and custard.

John scanned each pallet to ensure they were destined for the right place, before using an electric pallet trolley to load these goods onto the trailer, which made the loading process quick.

We collected our paperwork from the office and left the chilly building before climbing into the nice warm cab of the Volvo, to first complete the quintessential truck driver task of completing the paperwork.

Leaving Manukau, we headed for a second Foodstuffs distribution centre in Māngere. This time we were set to pick up fresh fruit and vegetables.

While we drove, John updated me on where we would be delivering the groceries to today: New World supermarkets in both Matamata and Cambridge.

As John loaded the fruit, he made sure to arrange the food products in the order of what would be removed first, while also factoring in the frozen aspect.

Working at lightning speed, John made the puzzle of arranging the load in the correct order easy.

On the way to Matamata, John told me about why the grocery runs are completed so early in the morning; it’s mainly due to the traffic that ensues throughout the North Island motorways each day and slows everything down, but it is also about getting the groceries into the supermarkets ready for the shops to open.

When we arrived at the Matamata New World, John cracked open the front doors of the trailer body to get into the front frozen section. Crisp air that had been keeping the frozen section of the trailer at -20 degrees Celsius blew out of the trailer.

The pallets of food were unloaded via forklift and then placed inside the warehouse area of the supermarket. After finishing unloading at Matamata we were back on the road, destined for our last delivery at New World in Cambridge. When we arrived, the same unloading process of last time began, but this time I jumped up in the trailer body with John and helped him move the pallets forward by using the pallet trolley, (this was harder than it looked and I gained a new understanding of the skills required for delivery people everywhere).

I enjoyed my time with John and appreciate even further how vital these refrigerated units are to our city and town infrastructure, and that they are essential to feeding our nation. Next time you go to the supermarket, spare a thought for the men and women working around the clock to keep the food on the shelves that feeds you.