The Hunts Point Wholesale Terminal in New York City’s South Bronx is the largest produce market in the world, where merchants run 32 companies spread over 113 acres, handling 1 to 3 million boxes of fresh produce at a time.
The gate fee for big rigs is $30.
The complex has gross sales of nearly $2.5 billion a year, supplying over 20 million people within a 50-mile radius of New York City, accounting for about 9 percent of the total U.S. population.
Hunts Point opened in 1967, and has its own public works, security team, with offices on the second floor with fruits and vegetables, union laborers, along with salesmen and buyers on the ground floor.
The handling of fresh fruits and vegetables involves product from 49 states and 55 countries.
Many of the merchants are descendants of the original owners who sold vegetables on push-carts and then at the lower Manhattan Washington Market of 1821 and its northern offshoot, Bronx Terminal Market, which eventually gave way to Hunts Point.
The market gates for big rigs open at 9 p.m. Sundays, and trucks are lined up to enter the market to unload at the docks. About 6,000 people conduct business daily at the market.
Trucks are delivering more of a diversification of product and at any one time there may be 50 different brands of broccoli, for example, on the market. The majority of buyers of produce from Hunts Point are retailers and restaurants.