Archive For The “News” Category
Because of stable volume and higher pricing, retail fresh produce sales in 2013 were up 4.8 percent, according to the review edition of the United FreshFacts on Retail Report. The United Fresh Produce Association report, produced in partnership with the Nielsen Perishables Group and sponsored by Del Monte Fresh Produce, showed annual trends for top fruits, vegetables, value-added produce and organic commodities.
A strong year in 2013 was enjoyed by organic produce, with sales gains of near 20 percent for both organic fruits and vegetables compared with 2012. Fruits saw strong sales gains in 2013 includingd avocados (11.7 percent), specialty produce (11.5 percent), citrus (8.9 percent) and apples (6.5 percent).
The highest sales gains with vegetables in 2013 were cucumbers (7.8 percent), cooking vegetables (7 percent), packaged salad (6.7 percent) and onions (6.5 percent). Volume gains for fruits in 2013 were topped by avocados (10.3 percent), stone fruit (5.1 percent), citrus (3,3 percent) and apples (2.4 percent).
The top gains in volume for vegetables included peppers (3.9 percent), packaged salad (3.8 percent), and carrots (1.7 percent).
Highlights for 2013 in the report include: produce department sales averaged $47,000 per week per store, up 4.8 percent from 2012; volume sales declined for four of the top 10 vegetable categories; value-added vegetables posted an increase of 15 percent in weekly dollar sales; fresh-cut fruit sales increased 13.2 percent; organic fruit volume up 17.8 percent compared with 2012; and organic vegetable volume 14.2 percent higher than 2012.
Fresh food is the fastest growing department at the supermarket,despite Americans are facing rising food prices, plus they are eating more sweets, according to Nielsen Perishables Group. With consumers continuing to lose their taste for frozen and canned goods in 2013, fresh food sales grew 5.4 percent from a year earlier, to $134 billion. They now represent about 30 percent of supermarket sales.
Contributing to the growth of fresh foods is the fact grocers are stocking an ever-greater selection fresh fruits and vegetables, says Jonna Parker, director of Nielsen. Another factor: Mass merchants, such as Wal-Mart Stores, and club stores are selling more fresh foods; these retailers are projected to account for one-quarter of fresh-food sales by 2016.
Nielson reports meat and produce make up the majority of fresh food sales, with 39 percent and 32 percent, respectively, followed by deli, baked goods, and seafood. The mix is different for online orders, however, where meat is a smaller share of sales—consumers prefer to see and touch beef, chicken, and pork before purchasing.
Allen Loggins has been an owner operator all but three years since he began trucking in 1996. Some might consider him old school, whether we’re talking about the 25-year-old Pete he drives, or his refusal to haul cheap freight. Then there is the matter of him keeping his down time to a minium waiting for loads.
We’ll start with the latter.
A resident of Jackson, GA, Allen says he used to run Florida a lot over a 25-year period. That has changed.
“There is a lot of sitting and waiting in Florida. I used to haul a lot of stuff (freight) into Florida ports. But there is simply too much waiting,” he relates. This also applies to hauling Florida produce, especially during the off season.
Instead, Allen now prefers Texas over Florida. He hauls mostly fresh produce out of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Often his destination is the Atlanta State Farmers Market. Sometimes he’ll deliver the fruits and vegetables elsewhere in Georiga or the Carolinas. The return trip to Texas typically involves meat that will be exported to Mexico. It typically is something like processed chicken or balonga he picks up in Selma, AL.
“I like hauling produce,” Allen states. “Some people think you are nuts. But if you haul out of Florida, you are nuts. I would sit there all day then they want you in Atlanta in no time. Florida wears you out hauling produce. Texas is much easier.
The 51-year-old trucker says there are occasions he’ll be stuck a day or two in McAllen, TX waiting for the product from Mexico to cross the border, but that is rather unusual.
Allen owns and operates Southern States Produce, which consists of his 1989 Peterbilt conventional, housing a 425 hp Model B Cat diesel. The truck has a 15-speed tranny and 3:90 rears. He pulls a 53-foot Great Dane trailer cooled by a Thermo King refeer unit.
Allen knows the old Pete well. He drove the truck for the owner until that person retired. A few months ago Allen purchased the truck and once again became an owner operartor.
“I don’t like these new trucks. They have too many electronics and sensors. They are too expensive to repair,” he states.
When it comes to produce hauling, Allen has a few basic principals to follow. He makes sure the product is hauled within in the proper temperature range. He also avoids mixing perishable items that are not compatable. Finally, he checks his reefer unit every couple of hours or so making sure it is doing its job.
Allen had recently delivered a load of Mexican green house grown roma tomatoes to the Del Monte facility in Altanta that he had picked up in South Texas. He then loaded meat products in Alabama for delivery back to Texas. From there he picked up a load of Mexican avocados, again in South Texas, where were delivered to the Atlanta State Farmers Market.
He just had his rig washed at the nearby Patriot Truck Stop, before taking four days off until hitting the road again. Allen typically has the truck washed a couple of times a month, citing the need of making a good impression with the shippers and recievers.
“I don’t want to pull up to the dock with a dirty assed truck. If you don’t have a nice looking truck, they might think you don’t take care about their load,” Allen observes.
Finally, as an owner operator, Allen says he has to gross between $2 and $3 per mile. This way he makes enough to put some cash away for repairs and maintenance.
It make sound old school, but it seems to work for this owner operator.
The sixth annual DOLE California Cook-Off recipe contest is accepting gas grilling recipes using at least one Dole Packaged Foods product at Dole.com/cookoff.
“Challenge yourself—whether you’re a young adult learning your way around a grill, an expert at feeding your family, or a full-time worker bee who is challenged to eat healthfully throughout a busy schedule—$25,000 is at stake here and it could be yours! Visit Dole.com/cookoff and enter your best recipe today,” Chef Ben Ford said in a press release.
Three finalists will be selected from around the nation to compete in Los Angeles on June 28, where they will don official Cook-Off aprons and prepare their Dole dish in front of onlookers at Santa Monica Place and a panel of judges led by a renowned celebrity chef Ben Ford of Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City, CA, for a chance to win $25,000. The 2013 Dole California Cook-Off Champion, Ally Phillips of AllysKitchen.com, will be on hand to pass the torch to this year’s winner.
The contest welcomes fans of healthy, GMO-free fruits and summertime grilling that have a unique, palate-pleasing recipe that incorporates a DOLE Packaged Food. Entrants should submit a bite-sized version and other innovative appetizers into the DOLE 2014 California Cook-Off recipe contest on Dole.com/cookoff. The culinary team at Dole and Chef Ben Ford will be on the lookout for the top recipes that demonstrate the best use of DOLE Packaged Foods products, creativity, flavor and taste, ease of preparation, and presentation.
During the final Cook-off, each finalist will receive support and assistance from a food blogger highly respected by the Dole Packaged Foods team.
For appetizing ideas on what to enter in the 2014 Dole California Cook-Off visit Facebook.com/DOLE or DOLE.com/Recipes. The 2014 DOLE California Cook-Off contest launched March 31 and closes on May 19.
An expansion project at the Mariposa Port, where Mexican grown produce enters Nogales, AZ is expected to be completed by August, but is already drawing praise from those who use it. Nogales produce shipments of Mexican product are huge.
Construction began three years ago and has been done in phases to avoid disrupting traffic at the heavily used port of entry. Up to 75 percent of Mexico’s imported produce goes through the Mariposa Port and Nogales during the winter months, including about 1,400 trucks per day. The final phase of the construction project is cold storage facilities adjacent to the truck docks. These docks also have been expanded where product can be unloaded for inspection, and placed in the cold storages, if necessary.
Produce ranks third in value of products crossing the border at Mariposa, behind vehicles/vechicle parts, electronics/machinery. With the expansion the port has grown from 43 to 57 acres.
The facility now has eight lanes for inbound commercial trucks from Mexico, up from four lanes. Exit lanes for northbound trucks has been increased from two to five exits. The improvements have been made to decrease wait times at the border and to speed deliveries.
After the trucks clear inspections, two percent of the total volume is randomly selected for agricultural inspections.
As one of the faster growing wholesale distributors in the Southeastern United States, the family owned Nickey Gregory Co. has not only achieved success due to the way it conducts business with fresh produce, but realizes the importance of transportation. In fact, President Nickey Gregory will be the first to tell you that since the beginning, he has owned a truck.
Opening on New Year’s Day of 2000, Gregory now has 14 big rigs being run by sister company, Gregory Family Express, which operates within a 750-mile distribution radius of their headquarters, located on the Atlanta State Farmers Market. The company also has 16 straight jobs running between Atlanta and its facility that opened three and one-half years ago in Miami.
“I’ve been in the wholesale distribution business and in the trucking business since day one. The one needs the other,” states Gregory, whose wife Cheryl Gregory is company vice president. There also are several other family members holding key positions in the company.
The full line wholesale distributor handles over 300 fresh produce items, sourcing product from all over the United States, as well as Canada, Spain, Mexico and Holland. The product is distributed to customers in Georgia, as well as Florida, the Carolinas, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia.
In recent years Gregory build a new 50,000-square-foot warehouse and offices on the Atlanta State Farmers Market. More recently, a repacking operation has been opened near the market.
While trucks are vital to the various Gregory operations, less than one percent of Gregory’s produce is delivered to Atlanta by rail. Still, Gregory wouldn’t hesitate using rail if it could provide the service. He notes one can save a dollar to $1.20 per package using railroads, but this does no good when it takes a month to receive your order.
“We used to do (buy) apples from Washington State. But we’ve lost orders by railroad for up to a month. It took nine months to get the claims settled with the railroads,” Gregory says. What little rail service he uses is mostly potatoes and onions out of Idaho and Oregon.
He states there was better rail service in the 1920s from Bakersfiled, CA to Atlanta when trains would stop to have railcars loaded with lettuce iced down.
“Texas used to be a rail market,” Gregory recalls. “We would receive cantaloupe from there.”
The wholesaler receives less than one percent of its volume by rail. Trucks continue to provide the service and flexiblity so important when handling fresh fruits and vegetables.
From day one at Nickey Gregory to this day and the foreeable future, refrigerated trucking will be a key to the company’s success.
Press Release
Wilder, Ky. — – RWI Transportation, an asset-based logistics company providing regional and national truckload, expedited, and refrigerated warehousing services, announces the launch of a new educational program geared toward helping independent owner operators to be successful in their businesses.
Called “RWI University,” this program contains nine core business courses to help owner operators effectively manage their businesses. Courses cover topics such as getting started as a business owner, fuel management, budgeting, and tax deductions.
There is no cost to participate.
RWI Transportation developed the curriculum to be meaningful and practical to its owner operators, using direct feedback and perspective from them. “We listened to the pains of our current owner operator base to determine what courses could help them to better manage their business,” said Tom Curee, RWI Transportation’s driver retention specialist who was instrumental in developing the curriculum. “As small business entrepreneurs, owner operators today have so much to take care of on a daily
basis. We wanted to provide a resource to them that would make those daily tasks easier and help their business be more profitable.”
To accommodate the physical spaced needed for this course along with other training needs, RWI Transportation recently expanded their orientation facility by adding a new mobile office outside of their corporate headquarters in Wilder, Ky. RWI
University also will be accessible to owner operators from any mobile device or computer, as well as from RWI Transportation’s terminals in Dallas, Texas, and Bloomington, Calif.
RWI Transportation successfully manages more than 100,000 shipments each year of all types of freight fully through the use of
owner operators. “Our success as a company is dependent upon the success of our owner operators,” said Daryl Harmon, director of driver recruitment, retention, training and lease purchase operations for RWI Transportation. “We are dedicated to providing the tools necessary to help them manage their business, and we are confident that RWI University will do just that.”
RWI Transportation willbe hosting an open house for all of their current owner operators March 31 to April 4, when the company officially launches RWI University. For additional information, visit www.RWIcontractor.com.
About RWI Transportation
RWI Transportation LLC is an asset-based logistics company that provides regional and national truckload, expedited, and refrigerated warehousing services for refrigerated and dry products. RWI is an affiliate of the Castellini Group of Companies, which forms one of the largest distributors of fresh fruits and vegetables in the United
States. For more information, visit www.rwitrans.com.
by Joseph N. DiStefano, Philly.com
Mexican ocean shippers met with South Jersey vegetable growers and Philadelphia-area port executives at the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market on Essington Ave. in Southwest Philly recently to try and convince shipping lines to establish a regular sea import-export service between the Delaware River ports and Mexico’s chief Atlantic port of Vera Cruz.
The four-day Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic route would compete with deregulated North American trucking lines sending General Electric locomotive parts, Heinz pickles, Hersheys chocolates and Alcoa aluminum ingots and other Pennsylvania exports totalling $3 billion South to Mexico last year, while importing $3.4 billion of Mexican fruit, vegetables and electronics, including about one-quarter of the produce terminal’s yearly volume, says PennPORTS, the state-backed port advocacy group.
Mexico’s chief port administrator, Fernando Gamboa-Rosas, who calls Mexico “la panza del mundo” (Belly of the World) because of its Atlantic and Pacific ports and its high volume of farm exports; and Juan Ignacio Fernandez-Carbajal, director of the Veracruz port, which is the focus of a $5 billion expansion campaign designed to stimulate Mexican trade.
A new survey conducted by the Idaho Potato Commission revealed that 97 percent of Americans said they eat potatoes and more than 81 percent enjoy them as a side dish, snack or main course on average of three days per week.
“The Idaho Potato Commission’s marketing programs have one main objective – to increase Idaho potato consumption nationwide,” Frank Muir, president and chief executive officer of the IPC, said in a press release. “We were thrilled with the survey results, which found consumer attitudes toward potatoes shifting. America’s favorite vegetable is now consumed three times a week, up from two times per week in 2009.”
The survey also revealed that more men than women (84 percent vs. 78 percent) eat potatoes once a week, and that Midwesterners are more likely than those in other regions of the country to eat potatoes at least once a week (88 percent vs. 78 percent).
Regarding how consumers eat their potatoes, the survey showed that baked (29 percent) led the way, followed by mashed (25 percent), French fries (17 percent), hash browns (9 percent) and potato chips (5 percent).
Baked potatoes are favored more by those who are age 45 and up than by 18-44 year-olds (36 percent vs. 23 percent). More 18-44 year-olds than those who are 45 and older prefer French fries (21 percent vs. 12 percent).
When survey participants were asked which vegetable they crave most, potatoes were the clear winner. Nearly one quarter (24 percent) of the Americans chose spuds, followed by leafy greens such as lettuce, kale or spinach (20 percent), broccoli (14 percent), tomatoes (13 percent) or corn (11 percent).
Despite the growing “buy local” movement, 72 percent of Americans would eat Idaho potatoes over potatoes from other states, according to the survey.
The Idaho Potato Commission survey was conducted by Kelton between Jan. 7 and Feb. 3 among 1,000 nationally representative Americans ages 18 and over using an email invitation and an online survey.
By Larry Oscar
Today, March 20th, is the first day of spring. This means potential treacherous trucking due to weather.
The long cold winter of 2104 will be sorely remembered and it will be one for the record books for much of the country. The extremely cold temperatures coupled with high winds and a series of relentless cold fronts are nothing. It was Mark Twain who said, “If you don’t like the weather just wait awhile.”
It has been rather humorous to listen to the global warming lemmings droll on about “Climate Change.” With the history of Earth dating back over 4.5 billion years, and our entire sample of weather records only dating back about 100 years, it doesn’t take much in the way of common
When you see cirrus clouds, it usually indicates that a change in the weather will occur within 24 hours.
sense to realize that we are in no position to make any long range weather predictions.
But one thing we can predict is the unpredictable. When spring finally arrives we will be in a changing weather pattern that will go from one of the coldest winters on record to a period of warming. There will likely be a larger temperature change because of the lower winter temperatures, and this will mean a larger temperature difference in the arrival of warm fronts.
Spring storms will probably be more severe this year. There isn’t anything you can do to control the weather, but there is something you can do to be prepared. The first thing to do is to know the signs of potentially severe weather. Cool days with very warm humid fronts moving in are dangerous signs.
When you are trucking in the months from April through June you must observe the weather patterns, forecasts, and cloud formations. Very few things in life are more terrifying than being caught in the middle of severe and violent weather. Whether it is tornadic storms or high, straight winds, and 80,000 pound big rig can be tossed around like a toy.
One of the best ways to stay on top of the weather is to get your kids or grandkids involved in weather forecasting. Fortunately, there is a host of information on the web. The best website for learning the weather is a website developed especially for children. As it turns out this
If you see altocumulus clouds on a warm, sticky morning, be prepared to see thunderstorms late in the afternoon.
website was developed by meteorologist Crystal Wicker for children of all ages, and it is very informative for adults as well. Check it out, and learn a little forecasting. It just may keep and your family safe this spring, whether at home or on the road.