Food Lion Trailer No. 893615 was a Great Dane Trailers dry van, model 731T, manufactured in November 1968. It was 45 feet long, measured 12 feet 6 inches in height, weighed 13,600 pounds, had a capacity of 49,960 pounds, and was purchased for $17,608.07. The Great Dane Trailer Company originated in part in 1931, when the Savannah Blowpipe Company sought to produce new lightweight trailers for the trucking industry and hired a Greenville, S. C., resident who was making trailers under the name Great Dane, a name tied to familiarity with their use as draft animals in Europe. As new laws governing trailer weights took effect in the 1930s, the company found a strong market for its trailers. Food Lion had long maintained an interest in the trucking industry; beginning with its first store in 1957, it purchased its own trucks and created distribution centers. The company later operated eight distribution centers in four states, including North Carolina, and employed almost 500 tractor-trailers to drive 52 million miles delivering fresh groceries to stores each day. This trailer hauled dry grocery products between warehouses and stores, with logos painted along its sides as rolling billboards on the interstates. Over a 17-year period, it traveled more than 1,000,000 miles and carried 6,620 loads of groceries and backhaul merchandise weighing 297,900,000 pounds.