An enterprising college student who’s been stuffing his 2008 Ford Focus with Krispy Kreme doughnuts from Iowa to resell in Minnesota every weekend is getting a new delivery van to help him expand his business, courtesy of Daimler Trucks North America.
Daimler partnered with logistical data provider FreightWaves to give Jayson Gonzalez a Freightliner Sprinter. Gonzalez, 21, learned of his gift while being interviewed on stage last week at a FreightWaves conference in Chicago.
“Holy cow. That is incredible,” Gonzalez said as a picture of the van was shown on the screen behind him. “That is a Krispy Kreme-mobile.”
Gonzalez began his weekly doughnut runs last spring, driving 500 miles round trip from St. Paul, Minn., to the nearest Krispy Kreme, in Clive, Iowa. Minnesota has been a Krispy Kreme desert since 2008, when the last store there closed.
Gonzalez, who attends Metropolitan State University, started out bringing back about 50 dozen doughnuts with each trip but modified his Focus sedan to carry 110 dozen as his sales grew.
After a newspaper story about Gonzalez went viral, Krispy Kreme briefly ordered him to stop before a social-media backlash compelled Big Doughnut to reverse course. In light of the added demand caused by the attention, Gonzalez started a GoFundMe page to help him replace the aging Focus, which has 192,000 miles on it, with a “used Sprinter Van, Large SUV, or Truck to increase that capacity to 200-300 dozens.”
Instead, he’ll soon be cruising across state lines in the comfort of a spacious new van. The automaker told him he can take delivery in January.