Sherman volunteers break down 36,000-pound food load for six area pantries

About 75 volunteers spent the morning of Aug. 26 in Sherman pulling roughly 36,000 pounds of donated groceries off a semi-truck and sending them back out to six North Texas food pantries, the Church of Jesus Christ in North Texas said in announcing the donation. The church named MasterKey Ministries of Grayson County as the local partner that took the load, an operation that says it feeds 1,000 to 1,500 families a week.

The shift ran from 7 a.m. to noon at 222 South Heritage Parkway, according to the first-party JustServe listing for the "Masterkey August Food Truck" project. The record described the tasks: unload the trailer, assemble food orders, then help load the orders bound for pantries around the region. JustServe showed 45 volunteers signed up ahead of the date. The church's post afterward put the turnout at about 75.

MasterKey describes a food-assistance program that has expanded since 2009. By the ministry's own account, it opened that September, joined the North Texas Food Bank snack program in 2011, voted to become a community pantry in 2012 and opened what it calls Sherman's first client-choice pantry in 2014. It moved more than a quarter-million pounds of food in that first pantry year, the ministry says, and reports serving more than 1,800 families in 2020, roughly four times the households it had regularly served. Drive-thru distributions run Friday mornings at Harvest Time Church and Saturday mornings at the ministry's own building on South Heritage Parkway.

County-level estimates show continuing food-insecurity needs in the region. Feeding America's 2024 Map the Meal Gap puts about one in six Grayson County residents in food-insecure households, and more than a quarter of the county's children. Cooke County sits a little higher on the overall rate, with roughly 7,700 residents estimated food insecure, about 2,600 of them children. Both counties run above Denton and Collin, where the same data set the rate near one in eight.

Food insecurity, 2024 estimates from Feeding America: Grayson County, 16.7% overall (23,940 people) and 27.2% of children (9,370). Cooke County, 17.8% overall (7,670 people) and 26.3% of children (2,620). Fannin County, 15.8%. Denton County, 13.6%. Collin County, 12.9%.

Statewide figures run higher. Feeding Texas, working from the same 2024 data, put the Texas rate near one in five, up from the prior report, and said referrals from the state's 211 line to food banks and pantries rose nearly 37% between February and June of this year. The USDA's Economic Research Service reported that household food insecurity in 2024 ran significantly higher than in any year from 2016 through 2021. Feeding Texas said SNAP supplies nine meals for every one that comes from a food bank, and that new federal cost-sharing rules could leave the state responsible for as much as $709 million a year in benefit costs beginning in fiscal 2028.

The Sherman truckload came out of the church's America250 program. The church's newsroom said the effort is built to deliver 250 truckloads nationwide by the end of 2026, with about half of them delivered as of June 17. Church News reported comparable loads earlier this year in Boston, Chicago, Kansas City and Lawrence, Kansas, running between 30,000 and 40,000 pounds.