07/11/2026
A glimpse into the life of a bbq food trucker.
If you don’t have time to read a novel, carry on. This isn’t important and there’s no announcement of any kind. Just wanted to paint a picture.
These are the events that happened yesterday, in the span of maybe 60-90 minutes tops. Here we go.
It wasn’t supposed to rain. It really wasn’t. They said the Saharan dust is going to greatly minimize the potential for rain, and a quick glimpse of MyRadar Weather Radar showed nothing earlier in the day.
We got to the green of course a “few” minutes late, as I was walking through the door to the food trailer I heard some thunder, and literally thought to myself “it’s not supposed to rain today”. We convert kitchen from transport to serving mode, and I go check the ribs, pork belly, and last brisket that’s all on the big smoker. As I’m on the porch, I hear more and more thunder. Getting closer and closer. Transfer a few of the racks of ribs that are finished and need to be glazed to the smaller smoker, go inside the trailer to grab the bbq sauce and brush, and pick up my phone to check the radar app. Open it up and 😳😳 huge storm, this is no “few minutes of rain” storm that might or not hit us. This is a behemoth headed straight to us and will likely last over an hour.
Uh oh.
The image of Ralph Wiggum on the Family Guy/Simpsons crossover episode, sitting on the school bus saying “I am in danger” comes to mind. We’ve got soooooo much food prepared. And multiple pre orders scheduled for pickup in the next hour, rain would completely decimate our chances of having a good night.
Not a minute later it starts to pour. More thunder. Wind is rocking the trailer. I come out to the porch evaluating the circumstances. Realize that the only outlet on the porch - has a messed up cover, and it isn’t “closed” and not waterproof whatsoever. I glaze a couple racks as people are coming up to the window and ordering / picking up pre orders. Leave the porch, go inside. I’m inside for maaaaaaybe 5 minutes, transferring butts and briskets into the steam table and get the first order started.
At this point it is raining cats and dogs. I run out to the porch to grab a rack or something, and the lights are off, the fan isn’t blowing, both smokers are dead. Water coming in through the screens, collecting in the corner - visibly dripping down the wall straight into the only outlet. I go back inside, take my gloves off, grab duct tape and a zip tie. Go outside open the barn doors to the porch and remove the plugs, reset GFCI, plug both plugs in, close cover, duct tape it, and put a zip tie on the bottom part that wouldn’t stay closed. Voila, everything is back on.
Smoker temps read 180, ok not bad, should be back up to 225 in a few. Go back inside.
Few minutes later come back out to the porch, and the big smoker dropped to 158, no smoke coming out of the chimney. I’ve had this happen before, once or twice - when it runs out of pellets. The igniter only lights the pellets in the very beginning when it’s in the ignition stage, once it’s lit, the igniter turns off, and the fan keeps the fire going, while the auger dumps small amounts of pellets into the fire pot. No smoke means the fire is out. I can hear the smoker keeps dumping pellets into the fire pot. Can’t press the off button on the smoker because it will take 45 min for the cool down cycle, no time for that.
I ask Dasha (my helper) to flip the circuit breaker on the porch to off. Once everything is off, I remove the entire firepot underneath the cabinet smoker, it is HEAPING, overflowing with perfectly fresh pellets. Dump it all into a water pan. at least two pounds of pellets covering some ash from the bottom. Stick my hand into where the fire pot is, removing whatever remains are there from the overflow. Stick the fire pot back in, latch and lock, she flips the breaker back to ON, I turn the smoker on and initiate the ignition process. Haven’t opened the door to the cabinet so it said it was at 150 still. I wait a minute to make sure it starts to smoke and head back inside saying it’s fine, should be back to temp in a few minutes.
Couple minutes inside, I smell a familiar scent. There’s good clean smoke that flavors bbq, and there’s the dark and dirty smoke that happens when the fire is too hot. Or, there’s a grease fire of some sort. I open the porch door and it’s filled with smoke. I glance at the controller and it says 300°! Chimney is pouring out dirty smoke like crazy. I open the smoker door a bit and see a bunch of flames from the bottom where the fire pot is. Uh oh. There’s 15 racks of ribs, a tray of pork belly, and the last brisket still on the smoker. It’s raining cats and dogs outside. Everything on the porch is getting soaked. The screens, when they are wet, the water clogs the little holes in the screens, trapping the smoke on the porch. I am panicking at this point. We’ve got several orders paid for, several pre orders that need to be picked up asap.
Maybe a month ago, I finally received the replacement motor for the exhaust fan on the porch. Old one went kaputz, and instead of spending $500 on a whole new exhaust fan, I ordered a cheap Chinese motor on Amazon for $60 - same specs as the original 🙄 but it spins at a fraction of the speed. Doesn’t do much to clear the smoke. I open up the side door on the porch to get some “fresh air” as I feel like I’m about to collapse from smoke inhalation. Trying to stay closer to the ground because at the top it’s hard to see, let alone breathe. Once the door is open, I open up the smoker door to make sure fire isn’t worse and see where all the meat is relative to the fire. Whoops. Pork belly, brisket, and a few racks are directly over the fire. I move it up and away. Smoker reads 380° now.
I keep the door open, and even though it’s windy enough I put the floor fan on HIGH to get the smoke out. Tell Dasha the flip the breaker again. For all I know the igniter is fueling the fire. This happened once before, sorta. I let the smoker run out of pellets, and the fire inside the fire pot went out, dumped a whole bag of pellets into the hopper, and assuming that the smoker will be fine just by doing that is a mistake. Since the pellets are no longer lit, it’s just going to dump the pellets nonstop, suffocating any chance of a fire.
My guess is, the pellets that overflowed from the pot, spilled out a bit in the surrounding area of the fire pot. There’s also some grease there from the meat dripping. When igniter lit the pellets again, the fire lit the overflowed pellets, and then the grease nearby. Like a wildfire. I kept opening and closing the door a bit, knowing that the oxygen is fueling the fire, but I can’t let the heat inside the smoker ruin all the meat inside. After 10-15 minutes the fire went out, and it finally started to drop in temp. It was definitely 5pm at this point, still raining, and instead of having a line out of the window the phone was blowing up. Order after order. Texts and calls nonstop. Because I kept opening the smoker door, none of the food got ruined. Spare ribs definitely became too tender, but the rest was good. Since all the meat was wrapped/covered - the flavor was not impacted at all.
All things considered, it was a great night. We stayed busy well last 7pm, with ample amounts of large orders going out of the window. Wait time was not great, and I hope people understand why. The process we use to make food is a bit obnoxious - we make things in small batches, and I am hand pulling and slicing everything upon ordering. This helps every person to receive the best, freshest bbq possible. I know I could slice the whole brisket right away, and pull all the pork and leave it all sitting in the steam table but this degrades the texture, appearance and overall quality of the meat. It’s why things take so long. It is an ineffective method time wise, but the best way for each person to get consistently great food.
The end.
