MEXICO CITY (CN) — Propane vendor José Antonio Herrera and his nephew Diego Uvaldo Contreras Herrera start their days at nine and end at six.
They follow the same route each day, snaking their customized Ford F-450 through central Mexico City. Antonio’s deep bellows of "gaaaaaaas!" echo off old stone buildings and alert residents to their presence.
In Mexico City — where there are no underground gas lines in most buildings — many restaurants and homes rely on gas tanks to heat homes or power kitchens. Hundreds of trucks like this one serve the metropolis, weaving their way through Mexico City’s urban fabric to make deliveries.
The work can be dangerous: Tanks are hooked up on the roofs of buildings, where staircases are narrow and elevators are rare. But the vendors are nonetheless a quintessential part of Mexico City life — and for their part, the Herreras enjoy the work.
Antonio, 39, and Contreras, 19, serve a handful of neighborhoods that border Mexico City’s historic downtown, including San Rafael, Tabacalera and Guerrero. They do deliveries six days a week, selling various-sized tanks of liquid petroleum gas.
The pair work for Gas y Servicio de México, a company headquartered outside of Mexico City, picking up their work truck from the company’s lot every morning and dropping it off each night. It’s one of three trucks — all owned by another worker at Gas y Servicio de México — that serves these three neighborhoods.
The cylinders these vendors sell range from just five kilograms up to 90 kg.
Until recently, the duo made most of their sales during their shift. That’s changed in recent years, as customers have started making appointments over the instant-messaging service WhatsApp.
The amount of sales fluctuates, with fewer sales on hot days — though the hundreds of restaurants and food stands scattered throughout San Rafael, Tabacalera and Guerrero rely on cylinders nearly daily to keep business going. "If we don't come,” Antonio explained, “they don't make money.”
On a recent July morning, Courthouse News joined the pair for a day of deliveries.
We were in the San Rafael neighborhood, one of the oldest former suburbs in modern Mexico City. The area used to connect with downtown via trolley, and most of its 19th century mansions and ranch homes are still intact.
Antonio pointed out a yellow building that he was particularly fond of. "I was walking around this corner years ago and yelling 'gas,' and there was a music school out on a field trip,” Antonio recalled. “The professor said I was a perfect example of how to sing: using your stomach, not your throat."
As they continued their route, he gave Courthouse News an impromptu tour of the area, pointing out which buildings were featured in movies and telenovelas. Some streets were largely occupied by teachers, he said, while others were mostly home to journalists.
As with many older Mexico City neighborhoods, some professions once concentrated in certain areas due to close proximity to universities, newsrooms, hospitals and factories — a trend that continues to some extent to this day. That’s left street names and neighborhoods bearing the names of professions, including the nearby Doctores Neighborhood, which houses the General Hospital of Mexico.
The San Rafael neighborhood has historically been an artistic enclave, and many of its streets are named after philosophers. The Tabacalera neighborhood, meanwhile, lies just on the other side of Mexico’s largest newsrooms. For Antonio and Contreras, this was all home turf.
"I've been doing this 20 years,” Antonio said — and working the route had built him inroads with the community. "My father did it in the same neighborhoods,” he added. “I'm here more than I'm at my own house. A lot of these buildings have been getting cylinders since they were built.”
