Your Stories Q&A: An update on Rescue Mission donation centers leaving Wegmans

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) – You ask, we answer!

Question: What’s the latest on Wegmans getting rid of drop-off donation trailers in its parking lots?

This is an update to a story the Your Stories Team first brought you last December. That’s when viewers started to notice Rescue Mission donation trailers disappearing from Wegmans’ lots.

Three closed last year and three more were scheduled to shut down this year.

In a December statement, Wegmans said, “In an effort to establish consistency across all Wegmans locations, it was decided to end this stand-alone Syracuse Division program.”

The Rescue Mission uses the trailers to collect items from more than 250,000 people each year. Some of what’s collected is donated to people in need. What doesn’t go to the homeless is sold at the Rescue Mission’s Thrifty Shopper stores to raise money.

When will the remaining locations close?

Rescue Mission CEO Dan Sieburg, said in an email that the remaining locations (Taft Road in Clay and Route 11 in Cicero) would be closing over the next two months. When we drove by the location off Route 11, an employee was putting up a sign that said it was closing this week, May 30.

As for the DeWitt location, it turns out that spot won’t be closing. It’s a big win for the Rescue Mission. It was hoping Wegmans would change its mind on closing DeWitt, because it’s the charity’s most popular site and sits far from E. Genesee Street, not blocking store traffic.

“You might be asking, what made Wegmans change their mind? Again they have been our partners for over 30 years with these centers, and after one conversation they made the decision to allow the DeWitt location to remain, once they learned that it yields our highest volume of donations compared to the others, ” Sieburg said in an email.

The Rescue Mission is still looking for new locations for its collection trailers. We’ll keep you posted when they land on a new spot.

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