Posts Tagged “apple haulers”
Washington state has finished its apple harvest and is looking to ship 118.5 million boxes of fruit for the 2o15-16 shipping season, which would be the third largest on record.
If apple shipments hold for the season this would be about 15 percent smaller than last year’s monstrous 140 million boxes of apples.
As of December 1st, packing houses have shipped about 25 percent of the crop, a higher than average share by that point of the season.
The early 2015 harvest caused some extra overlap with 2014 storage apples, especially Red Delicious apples. The 2014 crop cleared warehouses at about the same pace as the 2012 crop, the previous record. The industry shipped 6.7 percent of the 2014 crop after September 1st this year, compared to 8 percent, of the 2012 crop after Sept. 1, 2013.
A word of caution for apple haulers this season, some Washington state apple growers are expressing concerns about storage quality due to water shortages and extra hot weather over the summer. This could require even more attention to detail for truckers to what’s being put in the truck at loading docks as the season progresses and apples have been in storage for a longer amount of time.
We’ll try to keep you apprised as the apple season moves forward.
Yakima Valley apples – grossing about $6600 to Boston.
The third largest apple shipping season on record is forecast for the 2015-16 out of Washington state.
Virtually all shipments, which will originate out of the Yakima and Wenatchee Valleys, are pegged at 125.2 million cartons, compared to the record 140-million-carton 2014-15 fresh crop. The new season forecast for shipments, if holds true, would be just below the 128.3 million cartons shipped in 2012-13.
The harvest this season, due to hot weather, got underway a week or more early with galas, which started August 6th. Apple haulers will be loading a rising amount of gala and Honeycrisp, but will see declines in red and golden delicious compared with the past three seasons. 10 million fewer cartons of red delicious are expected to be shipped this season, compared to a year ago.
Some Washington state growers have removed red and golden delicious trees and planted Honeycrisp and other varieties.
Red delicious apples now account for 25 percent of the crop, followed by gala with 23 percent, fuji at 13.7 percent, granny smith at 13 percent and 7 percent for Honeycrisp.
Honeycrisp has passed golden delicious in expected fresh shipments. Observers expect Honeycrisp production — near 9 million fresh cartons now — to continue to climb.
Yakima Valley apple shipments – grossing about $4700 to Dallas; $6500 to New York City.
Apple Shipments
With the arrival of the New Year about 113.5 million bushels of U.S.-grown fresh-market apples had yet to ship, 16 percent more than at the same time last year. The amount of apples remaining in storage is also 26 percent higher than the five-year average.
Washington state accounted for 100.4 million bushels of fresh-market apples still in storage, while Michigan had 4.9 million bushels, New York 4.2 million bushels and Pennsylvania 1.3 million bushels.
The holdings of all major apple varieties were up from Jan. 1, 2014 ranging from red delicious to galas, fujis, granny smiths, golden delicious, Pink Lady and Honeycrisp.
Washington apple shipments are amounting to about 2,500 truck load equivalents a week from the Yakima and Wenatchee valleys, with a much smaller volume in pears.
Washington apples/pears – grossing about $4600 to Chicago.
The state also is shipping about 700 truckloads of onions per week from the Columbia Basin and the adjacent Umatilla Basin in Oregon. The same area also is shipping about one-half this volume in potatoes.
Washington/Oregon potatoes and onions – grossing about $3600 to Chicago.
In Michigan, there is adequate equipment from apple haulers, but shortages of trucks for hauling onions.
Michigan apple shipments grossing about $2600 to Atlanta, while onions are paying about $500 less per load.