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Action 9: How clean is your local food truck?

ORLANDO, Fla. — Action 9 exposes food trucks that keep failing state inspections and could make you sick. The rolling restaurants are widely popular, but WFTV's Todd Ulrich found the state has failed to get some truck owners to clean up their act.

Action 9 found an old grocery bag used to scoop cooked food, filthy water to wash dishes and even uncovered mystery meat.

“I have no idea what that could be,” said retired government inspector Paul Cook.

Those were just a few of the violations Action 9 spotted inside Carolina Lunch, a food truck with a history of serious inspection violations. There, Cook found many past risky mistakes had not been corrected, like frozen chicken thawing uncovered under a dripping air-conditioning unit.

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“Would you have her throw that out?” asked Ulrich.

“Yes. I have no idea how long it's been here,” said Cook.

When Ulrich first got in the truck, there was no running water, no paper towels and no soap, which according to Cook would make washing hands a major problem.

Just six months ago, a state inspector temporally shut down Carolina Lunch after it flunked an inspection. There were 14 warnings for risky violations.

“This is one of the worst food carts I've seen,” said Cook.

“Would you be shutting them down?” asked Ulrich.

“Yes. This is a public health hazard,” said Cook.

Action 9 analyzed state inspections for two years to pinpoint food trucks that kept breaking safety rules. The list includes Uncle Jones Bar B Que, El Greco Grill and Island Breeze Cuisine.

Inside Island Breeze there was no running water. Just as troubling, Action 9 found coleslaw at a temperature the inspector called a potential bacteria breeding ground.

“You need to throw that out right now,” Cook told the truck manager.

He also spotted an open food can stored next to oven cleaner near the ground.

“The entire scenario is potentially dangerous,” said Cook.

This same food truck had flunked its most recent state inspections and Action 9's inspector would have done the same.

“There are still things here that could make people sick," said Ulrich.

“Yeah, I know that,” replied the manager.

“Are you going to work on that?” asked Ulrich.

"Yeah, I'm going to work on that," said the manager.

Island Breeze was fined $600 by the state after Action 9's visit.

Ulrich asked the owner of Carolina Lunch to respond to the findings, but he did not.