The Imperial Valley and the Yuma district of Arizona have had cold, wind and freezes interminent with heat. Now it has got even hotter. Over the past weekend temperatures soared into the upper 90s.
When loading watch for heat related issues like scalding and internal burn. Additionally, keep an eye out for some remaining freeze related issues like blister and epidermal peel.
Just be sure you check closely what is being loaded into your trailer. The lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower have been through a lot this winter. If your receiver knows what’s being bought before it’s loaded, it could save you a claim, or rejected load.
Apple shipping Update
Across the USA there remains around 63 million bushels of fresh apples to be shipped, 13 percent more than at this time last year.
To put in even more perspective, this is 15 percent more fruit remaining to be hauled than the five-year average.
Nearly all of the remaining apples, to no one’s surprise, is in Washington state’s Yakima and Wenatchee valleys. Almost 61 million of those bushels are in Washington storages. Another 814,000 are in New York, 561,000 in Pennsylvania and 421,000 in Oregon.
By variety, there were 23.9 million bushels of red delicious still in storage, up from 21.5 million last year.
Fuji holdings rose from 5.8 million to 9.8 million bushels, gala from 8.5 million to 9.6 million bushels and golden delicious from 6.5 million to 7.4 million bushels.
Granny smith was the only majority variety whose holdings declined from 2012. Granny supplies fell from 6.61 million to 6.56 million bushels.
California Grape re-cap
California table grape shipments hit a record 101.5 million boxes between May 2012 and January 2013. This was the first time loadings topped 100 million, 19-pound cartons.
Washington state apples – grossing about $5700 to New York City.