'It's really tough': Local food trucks feeling the strain from extreme cold

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Local food trucks are feeling the strain from the extremely cold temperatures.

"It's really tough," said Abdallah Ismail, the owner of the Fatty Patty Food Truck.

For longtime food truck owners like Ismail, operating his food truck in freezing temperatures isn't new.

"We are in Wisconsin, so we are expecting that, but this year we had more colder days than say last year, or the years before," said Ismail.

However, he says it never gets easier keeping his food trucks and staff up in running amidst the snow and the frigid temperatures.

"It's still hard because its metal," said Ismail. "It's metal, it's hard to keep it hot inside, but you know we have the grill and other equipment running and have a heater inside so that helps."

He says it takes extra work to make sure the truck's equipment doesn’t freeze.

"We face a lot of problems in the winter definitely, not everyone wants to run in the wintertime," said Ismail. "It's hard to operate in that kind of weather."

The cold even causing him to swap out trucks.

"We do have a warehouse that can fit a truck or two trucks, so we keep rotating them in, let's say they are really freezing."

Many food truck owners rely on their business as their sole income and Ismail says the real challenge is colder temperatures leading to less customers.

"Customers they don’t want to you know like wait at the window and order, its freezing you know, who wants to wait for that," said Ismail.

At the end of the day, he says it's all about continuing to be there for his community and employees.

"I mean we do have employees and we want to keep them and also our customers are relying on us being there in the same spot for years, so we just decide to keep running all the year," said Ismail.

To still support local food trucks, owners say try calling ahead or placing an order online so you can skip that wait time in the cold.