American Meltdown food truck has its own meltdown, but gets back on the road

There’s nothing worse for a food truck than losing two employees right before a big event during the busy season.

Except for the propane line to the truck’s cooking equipment being damaged.

And two of the truck’s wheels falling off.

American Meltdown, a popular Durham-based food truck that serves grilled cheese sandwiches, had a major meltdown last week, but managed to reopen Saturday night and make it to Sunday’s Raleigh food truck rodeo.

American Meltdown, which first hit the road in 2012, specializes in the quintessential comfort food between two slices of bread: grilled cheese sandwiches.

It is a perennial favorite at food truck rodeos. American Meltdown has so many fans that owners Paul and Alycia Inserra opened a brick-and-mortar location in 2015 in the food court at Streets at Southpoint mall in Durham.

Paul Inserra posted to the American Meltdown Facebook page on Monday to tell the tale of the truck’s latest misfortune.

“By Thursday, we had already had two strong employees aboard the food truck hand in their two weeks’ notice (at the same time), one of which is in a lead position in the middle of food truck busy season,” Inserra wrote.

Moments later, Inserra got a call from his second truck captain letting him know “the wheels on the truck fell off while driving on Capital Boulevard in Raleigh.

“It must have been pretty terrifying to drive a 15,000-pound vehicle and see two wheels flying off in the rear-view mirror,” he wrote. “Especially when it is only days before your wedding day. Bobby, our captain, kept her steady, fine work sir.”

No one was hurt, but the truck was in bad shape – no wheels, sheared-off studs and broken bolts, broken rims, potentially a broken rear axle, “who knows what else,” he wrote. “There are a ton of reasons, we should not have been able to get the parts we needed, but we did.”

But the trouble didn’t end there. On Saturday morning, the American Meltdown crew discovered a ripped propane line – which fuels all of the cooking equipment on the truck. They were stuck.

“Repairing that on a Saturday just seemed highly unlikely,” Inserra wrote.

But in the end, it all worked out and the truck was up and running on Sunday. And the American Meltdown crew was already giving back. The Mr. Mongolian truck also had trouble over the weekend, but Inserra said his crew was able to help out.

“We were able to help based on our experience the day before,” Inserra said. “What’s nice in the food truck community is that for whatever reason its always been a community of helping each other out.”

This story was originally published May 8, 2017 at 6:23 PM with the headline "American Meltdown food truck has its own meltdown, but gets back on the road."