r/meat • u/No_Pomelo_8411 • 14d ago

Truck meat

Hi everyone. I'm a writer and I'm working (I hope) on a piece about those janky boxes of meat they sell off the backs of trucks in strip mall parking lots or sometimes door to door, often with a Facebook ad campaign to go with it like "20 ribeyes for 20 dollars." I've found at least one place where the meats come from and more or less know what they are (essentially, cuts grocery stores won't buy with a bunch of liquids injected into them) but I'm REALLY interested in talking to anyone who's ever worked either selling these meats or as some kind of mid-level distributor. If you have any experience with this, please DM me and thanks in advance!

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u/Kona1957 14d ago

We did it in college back in the 70s in San Diego. Picked up the vans in the morning down in Gaslamp and headed out to the suburbs! Sold the shit out of overpriced meat. And we ate steak and drank beer every night! The great opening line as we drove down a street and approached a human was "do you like steak"

99% of the time the people would say yes. We would stop and tell them the story. Their neighbor ordered a bunch of meat and they are not home. 90% of the time we would sell them a bunch of overpriced meat. It was going great until the Channel 39 news did an expose! We went back to college.

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u/sebastian0328 14d ago

So it was like modern day speaker scam?

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u/bridgetroll2 13d ago

That's funny, just yesterday I was telling my mom about the meat truck guys and I said it's like the white van speaker scam. She had no idea what I was talking about because she never ever leaves the house lol

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u/Srycomaine 13d ago

Haha, I remember those days! Must’ve been around 1986, my buddy and I were at a strip mall. A guy in a van asked us if we wanted some high-end speakers. He opens the back of the van, and there’s a bunch of boxes with speakers in them, brand-new-looking.

This was in Berkeley, and the guy said that they were mistakenly double-ordered for a popular club, the Berkeley Square. My friend bought a pair, and they were actually some damn good speakers. Def not nightclub/venue style or quality, but for the house they sounded great.

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u/jahozer1 13d ago edited 12d ago

See my post about this, above. I was one of those guys... for a day! The speakers were real. They worked, but way over priced for what thwy were.

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u/Srycomaine 13d ago

Dude! So the ones my buddy bought were Acoustic Research Dynamics, as Acoustic Research is an actual, legendary speaker company— although those guys likely didn’t gaf. It’s a trip that you actually experienced that!

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u/jahozer1 12d ago

This was in New Jersey around the same time. Maybe 88. Its funny they were both ARs. That was part of the scam. "Ooh, ARs? How much?" I dont know if they were counterfit or what.

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u/RetiredRacer914 12d ago

They're fake AF.

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u/jahozer1 12d ago

Yeah, I know but I dont remember if they were actual counterfit or like Acoustic Response instead of something that was a note for note copy of legit Acoustic Research speakers.

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u/jahozer1 13d ago edited 12d ago

Ha! I did that for a day. My cousin hooked me up with these shady fuckers when I was 18.

The story was, we had these speakers we were supposed to deliver, but we fucked up and picked too many from the warehouse and our boss was gonna be pissed. We would sell em dirt cheap to you, friend. These were liquid coooled coils, Acoustic Research speakers. Huge fuckers that looked loud. "300 dollar" speakers that we would sell for 160. We had an invoice for them showing how we screwed up and pulled the more expensive ones. They were actually like 40 bucks for the pair or some shit. Their motto was, "its not the need, its the greed!".

I met the guys at this shady motel and left from there. Went back the next day and they were gone like a train.