Last year, Dickinson hired many different food trucks to come during the weekends beginning in October to alleviate the amount of delays and students in the dining halls. This year, food trucks have returned to campus in the form of Food Truck Mondays.

The initial  reason for the food trucks as a consistent standalone program came last fall as a way to “enhance the dining experience for students at Dickinson, and simultaneously support and ease the work of dining services,” said Jessee Vasold, Assistant Director of Student Leadership & Campus Engagement. Other systems were put in place to alleviate the stress on dining services such as “the food voucher program, [and] working with local restaurants.” When looking for other ways to assist Dining Services, food trucks were brought up as they had been used for campus events in the past. The presence of food trucks on campus this semester is to “continue to support Dining Services and the dining experience of students at Dickinson.”

Located at the circular driveway outside of Allison Hall, these food trucks include such vendors as Potato Coop, Mel’s Rock N’ BBQ and 717 Tacos. Student Leadership and Campus Engagement (SLCE) choses the food trucks each semester using “an excel document of food trucks we’ve worked with in the past, food trucks that we haven’t,” says Vasold. 

Each year SLCE researches  food trucks that may be available and adds them to the excel list before removing the ones that are no longer available. The list is not only used for Food Truck Mondays, but also for a myriad of events on campus that use outside food venders. From there, the Project Coordinator for Campus Life reaches out to food trucks to discover which ones are  available to be on campus Mondays from 6pm to 9pm.

The location for the food trucks was also meticulously planned. Vasold recalled the food trucks on Britton Plaza last year and that “feedback [from facilities and Dining Services] was that there was a lot of food waste and trash  throughout Britton Plaza, and then students frequently picked up food and brought it into the dining hall.” He went on to describe the need for a “buffer zone” between the food trucks and the caf at the HUB. Other factors that played into the new location of the food trucks included: a place where a food truck could logistically fit, for example parking lots of campus and circle drives, and a place where the trucks could if necessary run extra power.

The food trucks are a part of an effort by Dickinson to both assist dining services and provide alternative options for students on campus; however, the program is not perfect, and students have complained about the long lines and the out-of-the-way location of the food trucks. 

Roland Locke ’25 heard about the food trucks from a Dickinson Today email. He told The Dickinsonian that he waited “an hour and 20 minutes or something” for food because “the food truck opens at like six, and I got there at like 6:30 and that line was like really long when I got there and stayed really long the whole time I was there. But then, when I finally got my food, it had dwindled down to the people waiting for their food.” He explained that he decided to wait in the line rather than go to the caf because “I can go to the caf any day but food trucks are only every Monday.”

Jilliyn Iannace ’26 heard about the food trucks from a friend, and had attended the past two weeks of Food Truck Mondays. She explained that she had waited about an hour for food but “that’s just what we were doing, I was talking with my friends so I didn’t mind.”