Food Fair

Food Fair was both a major employer in Frank Sheeran’s working life and the workplace whose delivery and inventory systems he learned to exploit. He drove its trucks for ten years, stealing meat on the side until the company’s investigations and an interstate-theft indictment brought the arrangement to a head. The account presents Food Fair not simply as a backdrop to Sheeran’s rise: its routes and controls connected his ordinary wage work to criminal favors, while its union contract and missing records helped him resist the company’s efforts to dismiss him.

Employment and the delivery system

Sheeran first took day jobs through the Teamsters union hall after losing his Food Fair job, then later secured a regular position driving for the chain. His Food Fair work involved delivering hindquarters of beef and chickens. With a steady paycheck, he could support his growing family; the job also gave him access to the goods and routes that he would use to make money illicitly.

One arrangement began with chickens. Dusty Wilkinson showed Sheeran how to set aside birds and replace them with ice so the crates retained their expected weight. Sheeran drove past the Red Rooster bar, where buyers were waiting, and Wilkinson sold the fresh-killed chickens for a dollar apiece; they divided the proceeds equally. A surplus of sixty chickens meant thirty dollars for each man. This was a side business built around Sheeran’s deliveries, not a formal Food Fair operation.

A more elaborate scheme depended on the aluminum seal placed on a truck’s lock after loading. The yard manager was supposed to apply it, but in bitter weather might hand the seal to the driver instead. Sheeran could palm it, divert five hindquarters to a contact waiting at a diner, then attach the seal before arriving at the store. Because the store manager would find the seal intact and break it there, the interruption in transit was concealed. In the store, Sheeran shifted meat between rails and presented the expected number of hindquarters for the manager to count and sign off on; later shortages could be detected without establishing which driver was responsible.

Investigation, records, and the union contract

Sheeran’s account also describes how the scheme became conspicuous. On one trip to Atlantic City he sold his entire load before reaching the store. When the manager broke the seal and found no meat, Sheeran feigned ignorance, joking that he thought he had been driving a good horse rather than a light truck. Food Fair posted notices warning managers to watch him. The signs did not stop the thefts, and the company still struggled to prove how they were happening.

That difficulty mattered because the contract protected a Teamster from dismissal without specified grounds. Stealing could justify termination if it could be proved, but Food Fair lacked evidence sufficient to establish Sheeran’s responsibility. On November 5, 1956, the government indicted him for stealing in interstate commerce. His lawyer urged him to plead and identify the other people involved. Sheeran instead warned the government witnesses to keep quiet and not inform, then broke into an office and took Food Fair records documenting other shortages.

At trial, one witness after another failed to pin the thefts on him. Sheeran’s lawyer introduced the company’s records; when the government objected that Sheeran had stolen them, he claimed that an anonymous person had left them in his mailbox. The judge dismissed the case and criticized Food Fair’s position, saying that if he owned its stock he would sell it. The company then offered Sheeran $25,000 to resign. He refused, saying he could not afford the pay cut. His acquittal mattered to the people around him not only as a legal victory but as evidence that he had not named them.

Resignation and aftermath

Food Fair later hired investigators to watch a restaurant where they suspected stolen meat was being dropped. They caught the man making the delivery in a pickup truck loaded with Food Fair meat, but could not identify it as coming from any particular driver’s truck. The company told Sheeran it would let the man go if he resigned. This time it would not offer the $25,000; Sheeran believed the company expected him to refuse to let the other man take the blame. He accepted the terms and resigned.

Russell Bufalino later told Sheeran he had done the right thing by saving a man with a wife and children from jail. The decision nevertheless left Sheeran himself out of work, with a wife and children to support. He returned to casual jobs obtained through the union hall and kept his ballroom work, but without Food Fair routes it became harder to push money for a local criminal figure or sell lottery tickets for Joey McGreal. The company’s role thus extended beyond the theft cases: losing its regular routes weakened Sheeran’s income and changed how he could serve the people whose approval and favors shaped his next steps.

Significance in Sheeran’s account

Food Fair’s procedures furnished both opportunity and exposure. The seal, store count, and inventory records were meant to secure the chain’s deliveries, yet Sheeran’s account shows how lapses in applying the seal and the difficulty of tracing shortages let him divert meat. When the company did investigate, its inability to link the stolen goods to a specific driver limited its case; its contract with the union further constrained its ability to act without proof.

The workplace also became a test of loyalty. Facing an indictment, Sheeran rejected a plea that required him to name associates, and after the company caught the delivery man he resigned rather than leave him to prosecution. Food Fair was not itself presented as part of the criminal network. It was the legitimate employer whose routes, goods, records, and labor protections became entangled with Sheeran’s illegal dealings—and whose eventual loss marked the end of his dependable truck-driving income.