ANorth Dakota United Van Lines moving van pulled up next to a Dallas hotel Wednesday morning.

Other than that, nothing about this was typical for a moving van scenario.

Nobody was going to get paid for hauling this load. The van's driver and owner, Allan Knipp, 45, of Surrey, didn't want to be paid. And the North Dakota owners of the van's load of household goods will never see their goods again.

It's all a gift: From worried people up here to homeless hurricane victims down there, specifically the people being housed by a Quality Inn in Dallas.

Dave Peterson, manager of the 244-room convention hotel at 1955 Market Center Blvd. in Dallas, made a decision early on not to turn away hurricane victims who couldn't pay for rooms.

The hotel owner, Chuck Sutherland, a part-time Dickinson resident who is renovating a Dickinson hotel, agreed.

So far, the hotel has helped 800 victims, Peterson said Wednesday. Those who didn't have money for food are being fed. And the hotel has relocated 100 families into apartments and helped the adults find jobs.

Knipp said that his haul to Dallas weighed about 17,500 pounds - food, clothes, toiletries, diapers, baby beds and more, collected by the Days Inn in Bismarck and from people in Knipp's hometown of Surrey. To compare, Knipp said an average household, one family's goods, usually weighs about 8,000 pounds.

"We just so thank the people of North Dakota for being so generous and supporting the people of Texas and Louisiana," Peterson said.

It all started when Kathleen Buford, 52, general manager of the Days Inn at 1300 E. Capitol Ave. in Bismarck, said she kept crying when she saw television images of Hurricane Katrina victims who so desperately needed help. After reading about a hotel that was housing, feeding and finding jobs for people, she phoned the hotel's owner and asked if supplies were needed.

They were. The hotel had been shouldering costs of about $5,000 a day to house and feed people.

"He told me they weren't going to turn people away,"she said.

Buford's effort gained steam when a Sysco Corp. food delivery man, Paul Parker, agreed to donate food. Then someone Parker knew, Phil Butz, donated a 20-foot-long storage container for donations.

Donations from the public started coming in - at such volume that Butz had to provide two additional 20-foot containers.

Enter Knipp, a United Van Lines driver, and his wife, Terra Knipp, co-owner of the moving van. They'd been wondering how they could help. When they heard that Buford's effort needed a truck and driver, they volunteered.

The Knipps' hometown of Surrey got involved, too. Hope Lutheran Church in Surrey had a big fundraiser. Surrey schoolchildren collected about $400 and bought needed items. They also wrote letters and drew pictures. Schoolchildren at Belle School outside of Surrey also participated.

This is new to Allan Knipp.

"I've never done anything like this before,"he said.

But he liked doing it, very much.

"It feels really good," he said Thursday.

Eight years ago, he and Terra lost a son, and the community rallied around to keep them going.

"It's nice to give something back, even if it's not the same people,"he said.

On Wednesday morning in Dallas, if it had been a typical unloading scenario, Knipp would have had to find a couple of guys and pay them out of his pocket to help him unload. Instead, so many people wanted to help - hotel residents and local church volunteers - that a line 30 feet long formed to pass boxes down the line to the storage area near the hotel.

It was in line that Knipp listened to a 60-year-old man tell him how, when the water reached his front porch, he had to wade about 1½ miles in waist-deep water. The water was so contaminated with oil, gas and whatever else that he became blistered from the waist down.

After four hours of unloading, Knipp, on a tight schedule, couldn't stick around long. It was time for the other kind of loads, paying loads, that will take him eventually to the East Coast and away from home for three weeks.

But Dallas' Quality Inn might not have seen the last of Knipp, or maybe some other North Dakota driver.

Kathleen Buford plans to ask for more contributions and more help for Dallas.

"We still have a lot of people calling (wanting to donate),"Buford said.

"This has re-established my faith in humanity."

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com.)