It’s the only truck people love to see tailgating.
A Long Island trash hauler and longtime New York Jets fanatic converted his mini truck into a massive, high-tech grill to feed the diehards gathered every week at MetLife Stadium.
Season ticket holder Sean Winters of the West Babylon-based Winter Bros. was there for the Jets opener Sunday — as he is for every home game of the season, pulling never-optimistic Jets faithful out of the inevitable Gang Green dumps.
“I probably spend about $1,200 to $1,500 bucks between beer, meat, and dessert per Sunday,” Winters told The Post.
“We probably feed about 100 to 120 people and cook about 200 pieces of meat in two hours,” added the loyal fan, sporting work boots, a t-shirt, and a Rolex on Sunday morning.
And, rain or shine — lots of rain in the case of week 1 when Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers came to town — the menu is much more upscale than just typical dogs and burgers, said Winters’ longtime grill master.
“Today we have some marinated fillet mignon, marinated ribeye steaks, marinated chicken, homemade sausage and peppers — hot and sweet — plus some pork carnitas,” said Islip’s Richie “The Knife” Shire, who has been the designated grill master for nearly 35 years.
It takes a team of four or five longtime pals to run the makeshift cooking station — Winters covers their tickets each game as a thank you — and five bags of charcoal alone to light up the grill that is a few yards in length.
The sophisticated piece of machinery — a green lifelike replica of the real Winters Bros fleet — is brought over the George Washington Bridge on a special trailer hitch and is remotely controlled to autonomously roll around on golf cart wheels through an “electrical hydraulic” system.
“It weighs about 1,500 pounds,” said Winters, a former owner who is now an executive consultant for WM, which acquired his company last year.
“Everybody loves to see us roll it out. Kids come, and people who have seen it for the past 15 years still get excited each game.”
However, the gargantuan grill — which is also brought to employee appreciation barbecues — is just one tailgate trick in his playbook.
The whole nine yards
Since 2010, 60-year-old Winters, whose exceptional enthusiasm was immortalized in the Jets fan hall of fame, has brought fellow faithful to the Meadowlands for home games in a tricked-out, memorabilia-filled green bus that leaves from a Smithtown Uncle Giuseppe’s parking lot.
“Everybody knows where we are…security holds the spot for us at the stadium,” Winters said of the E-lot extravaganza that drowns out any nearby setups with huge speakers blasting the classics like “Sweet Home Alabama.”
It even caught the attention of Jets owner Woody Johnson and team greats like “Broadway Joe” Namath and Nick Mangold.
“I asked Woody Johnson if, when there is a Super Bowl parade, if the bus can go in the parade…I really want to see a parade,” said Winters, who was too young to appreciate the Namath-led 1969 team’s sole title for the franchise.
“He said ‘no problem.’”
It’s all a labor of love for the St. James native who has suffered at the hands of the apoplexy-inducing AFC squad since he was just a teenager during the days of the Jets’ mighty D-line nicknamed the New York Sack Exchange in the 1980s, some of whom are shown on the bus’ exterior.
“My favorite part is the excitement…getting so many people to meet at 8 in the morning on Sunday, there’s nothing like it,” Winters, who feeds parking lot staff, said.
“There are kids on the bus who started coming when they were 5, and now they’re 20. It’s become such a family event,” added Winters, whose own kids tag along to the invite only affair as well.
The loyalty of younger fans, whose lives as fans have been filled with misery and woe on the gridiron, is not lost on the Jets lifer, who began tailgating with his wife 34 years ago.
“It’s just very hard to be a Jets fan, especially the past 15 years,” lamented Winters, a season ticket holder since 1991.
He at least saw Bill Parcells and Vinny Testaverde’s 12-4 1998 team, as well as the back-to-back conference championship games in 2009 and 2010. That’s opposed to young millennials and Gen Zers who bore witness to the forgettable Zach Wilson and Aaron Rodgers eras.
However, hope springs eternal for Winters and his merry bunch.
“It’s exciting at the beginning of the year,” he said. “Nobody is better than us yet.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
