Cold Storage

Dreisbach is my neighbor. When I moved in, my landlord told me that they provided cold storage and that, even on the hottest of days, we would see men coming out of the factory in huge coats. What I notice a lot more than the men in the big coats is the mack trucks that idle in front of my house around the clock, while using my short street to turn around and back up to the warehouse. On moving day, my moving truck wasn't able to get to my house because 2 trucks were blocking the street. I asked my neighbor if this was normal and he smiled and said, "Oh yeah! You'll hear trucks right here at 3 in the morning! All the time!" I was scared, very scared.

As it turns out, Dreisbach hasn't been such a bad neighbor. The trucks come at 4am, they idle, they block my driveway in the morning when I'm trying to leave for work. But, all in all, the drivers are courteous when I need to leave, and its kind of exciting having this kind of industry going on right here. The steel manufacturer directly across the street from my house is a story for another day...

I learned from the tour of Dreisbach that they are a 3rd generation family business established right here in 1900, and that they have locations in Pajaro and Watsonville, near where I grew up, where they freeze fruits and vegetable straight from the farm for packaging. They also use the train tracks and rail spur directly behind their factory to load and unload merchandise. They store foods on their way to Asia (eg. "Chicken Paws" [feet!] heading for China pictured above) and foods just arrived from all over the world, on their way to the American market.