Archive For The “Trucking Reports” Category
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re Florida spring produce shipments finally getting back on track? It’s been a lousy year for Florida growers and shippers, not to mention produce truckers.
After an unseasonably warm fall, the region was hit by severe storms and record-breaking rains. Rainfall was 139 percent above average in November, 199 percent above average in December, and nearly 350 percent above average for the month of January. Planting, spraying and harvesting schedules were delay for many of the area’s signature crops, including sweet corn, green beans, lettuce and leafy greens, parsley, radishes and sugar cane.
While produce shipments are late for some crops because of some delays in planting, loadings should become more steady heading on into spring.
Over the next couple of months, there should be good volume with items ranging from tomatoes, to green beans, blueberries, cabbage, celery, sweet corn, melons, lettuce, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, potatoes, radishes and squash. However, the strawberry season is drawing to a close.
Florida produce shipments ranks number one in the U.S. with a number of fresh fruits and vegetables including grapefruit, snap beans, squash, sugar cane, cucumbers, oranges, tomatoes and watermelons.
By mid-April, new-crop shipments of tomatoes and other items should start coming out of the Palmetto/Ruskin area of Florida.
Florida vegetables – grossing about $1900 to Chicago.
Shipments of both avocado and mangoes are on the rise and will continue to increase as we get further into the year.
California avocado shipments are now providing steady loadings for produce truckers from both southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. The California harvest is now exceeding 10 million pounds per week and will continue to increase through the spring. Shipments are expected to peak in late June, and remain strong throughout 2016. A significant dip in avocado shipments is not expected until after the Super Bowl, Feb. 5, 2017, in Houston.
While California avocado shipments tend to be hauled to markets in the western half of the U.S., much of the avocado supply for U.S. markets is coming from Mexico, which tends to serve destinations in the eastern half of the U.S. Mexican avocado shipments also are heavy this year, with the majority of imports crossing the border at McAllen, Tx.
Huron head lettuce and San Joaquin Valley citrus – grossing about $5600 to New York City.
Mango Imports
Mexican mango shipments imported to the USA were unseasonably low during March. For the week ending on March 19, 1.2 million boxes arrived from Mexico, making it 4.8 million boxes for the season. That is down from the same week in 2015, when 1.5 million boxes arrived and 5.9 million boxes had come in for the season. However, mango imports are now on the rise and big volume supplies are crossing the border from Mexico, as well as arriving at US ports by boat from Guatemala.
Lower Rio Grande Valley citrus, Mexican mangos, tomatoes, vegetables – grossing about $2600 to Chicago.
Georgia, known as the Peach state, has been growing the fruit for 140 years. Excellent peach shipments are forecast.
There are approximately 10,000 acres of Georgia peach farms stretching across the historic Fort Valley plateau. 90 percent of Georgia peaches are grown in this region of Georgia, located just south Macon and west of Interstate 75.
Georgia peach shipments are expected to get underway the third week of May, with good volume shipments occurring for deliveries prior to the May 30th Memorial Day holiday. Georgia peach shipments will continue through the end of summer.
Due to ideal winter growing conditions, Georgia peach shippers see a bumper crop that could become the biggest in more than a decade. Harvest should begin May 15th.
This year, Georgia growers and shippers expect to harvest 80 million pounds of peaches, which could pack 3 million, 25-pound half bushel cartons, double the 1.5 million cartons they packed last season. This would be the largest volume since the 2004 season.
Besides the Eastern U.S. and the Midwest, Georgia Texas and Canada are among the strongest destinations for Georgia peaches.
Good, steady peach shipments are expected through the end of August without significant peaks and valleys.
Produce trucking in the Southeast leaves something to be desired, despite it being April. You might get some partial loads in Florida and finish of the truck out in Southern Georgia where there are light shipments of vegetables such as carrots, kale and other greens.
Southern Georgia vegetables – grossing about $2200 to New York City.
Imported grapes from Peru are now being handled by a port of entry in Georgia.The Port of Savannah is now receiving Peruvian imported grapes, adding to the list of cold-treated perishables using Savannah as a port of entry. The port also is handling avocados, citrus and sweet onions from Peru, although the season for the latter commodity has recently ended.
With the introduction of Peruvian red globe grapes, Savannah is now receiving all of the grape category leaders from Peru.
The grapes, moved from Andean Sun Produce farms in Ica and Piura, Peru, are part of a USDA’s program, in which citrus, grapes and blueberries are chilled for at least 17 days prior to entry into the U.S. Removing potential pests via cold treatment reduces the need for pesticides.
By delivering fresh produce in Savannah, receivers are taking advantage of much shorter and faster refrigerated truck transportation to Atlanta and other major markets across the U.S. Southeast. For example, this means only a four-hour truck ride to Atlanta versus a day and half from the Philadelphia ports.
The USDA program to allow cold-treated produce to enter through more U.S. ports will relieve congestion at older ports of entry, while shortening the supply chain between producers and final consumers. The ultimate goal is to deliver imported fruit to our U.S. receivers faster, fresher, and at competitive prices, cutting logistics costs.
As imports of melons from Central America begin to wind down, domestic loadings will become available from California and Arizona, as well as with melons crossing the border from Mexico.
Cantaloupe. honeydew and watermelon shipments from Arizona and Mexico are expected to start earlier than normal this year as imports from Guatemalan and Honduran come to a close in early May.
Various melons from California’s Imperial Valley should start shipping in late April and hit peak volume in May, perhaps its earliest start ever. This will be closely followed by melon shipments originating around May 10-15 from Yuma and Maricopa, Az. From there cantaloupe and honeydew loadings will start from California’s Westside district in the San Joaquin Valley around the 4th of July.
California Onion Shipments
California onion shipments from the Imperial Valley should get underway in mid April, lasting about five to six weeks. Normal acreage in the 10,000-acre range is being reported. The Imperial Valley should have onions through May, when the harvest shifts to the San Joaquin Valley. The central valley had less acreage last year, primarily to the California drought.
Southern California citrus and avocado shipments – grossing about $3700 to Chicago.
Southeastern blueberry shipments are running about two weeks later than normal.
Due to unusually warm winter, produce truckers can expect a later start for Florida and Georgia blueberries and good volume for both states is expected two weeks later than usual. In late March, harvest was light in the southern part of Florida near Wauchula.
Some operations started harvesting light volume in mid-March, but packing in volume isn’t expected until April 15. The transition to Georgia is expected to start in mid-April. Something different in Florida is a slow season with drawn-out shipments vs. a seasonal production peak. Florida should ship blueberries through late May, instead of the more typical mid-May finish. As for Georgia, peak loadings should start about May 7, later than the state’s typical late April peak.
This year, Florida expects to ship around 18 million pounds, down from last season’s 25 million pounds. Florida blueberry shipments will be light through early April with larger, truck load volume planned for April 15-20, about two weeks later than normal.
Early season Georgia blueberry shipments will be lighter because of cold weather during February in the Homerville, Ga. area. Up to 25 percent of Georgia’s early crop could sustain losses and good volume shipments are not expected until May.
In Florida, decent volume shipments are not expected until April. Florida will have its heaviest shipments in late April and in mid- to late April, when both states will be shipping.
Florida berries, veggies and tomatoes – grossing about $1000 to Atlanta.
Sweet onion shipments are lower this season from Texas and Mexico as we move closer to loadings out of Vidalia, GA. Red potatoes are picking up in one state, while showing disappointment in another.
Peruvian sweet onion imports ended in early March as imports began from Mexico. However, Mexican onion imports are lower this season and are now starting to wind down. At the same time, Texas onion shipments from the Lower Rio Grande Valley have started.
Initial reports indicate Texas acreage will be under 5,000 acres, down from the 6,000-acre industry norm. Still, Texas onion shipments are now in good volume.
However, the nation’s biggest volume sweet onions come out of the Vidalia, GA area. Vidalia onion shipments are scheduled to get underway April 25th. A near perfect growing season has been reported from Vidalia. This season, Vidalia should have production from about 11,600, down a little from a year ago, when there was over 12,000 acres.
The Vidalia region’s 65 growers in 2015, shipped 17% of Georgia onion shipments in April, 36% were moved in May, 27% in June, 16% in July and 3% in August. Total shipments of Georgia onions were about 4.2 million 40-pound cartons in 2015.
Red Potato Shipments
The Red River Valley (eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota) usually has its biggest shipments during November and December, but a bumper Wisconsin red crop and a weak Canadian dollar over-supplied a market resulting in fewer shipments. This year February and March are believed to be the two busiest months with 539,000 hundredweight (cwt.) shipped from the Valley in February, up over 13% compared to last year, and slightly more than either November or December. Some wash plants have added extra shifts to handle the demand and trucks have been in good supply thanks in part to the slowdown of the oil patch in western North Dakota.
Meanwhile, the later Florida crop is expected to be better, but who knows for sure considering the early Florida crop didn’t live up to expectations. South Florida red potato shipments are expected to increase in early April.
South Florida potatoes, tomatoes and vegetables – grossing about $2100 to New York City.
Red River Valley potatoes – grossing about $3000 to Dallas.
It is shaping up to be an overlap of grape shipments this spring from different parts of the world. Late season imported Chilean grapes will be overlapping imported grapes from Mexico, as well as grapes from the desert of California.
Unfavorable weather earlier in the season has made for tight supplies of red grapes coming from Chile as compared to the supply of green grapes. Chilean grapes are arriving by boat on both U.S. coasts. But that situation could flip next month, as more red grapes are expected in the U.S. market.
The supply of red grapes should pick up around late March or early April. By early May, red grapes from Mexico will be crossing the border into the U.S.
During the 2015 season 110.5 million boxes (109.3 million 19‐pound box equivalents) of California table grapes were shipped. The California grape industry surpassed the 100 million box mark for the first time in 2012. Since then, the total crop volume has seen three consecutive years over 110 million boxes.
The 2015 season total of 110.5 million boxes was the third-largest crop volume in the industry’s history, just below the 2014 total of 110.9 million. The largest crop to be shipped was in 2013 at 117.4 million boxes.
California grape shipments are available from May through January. With the 2016 season only about six weeks away, Mexican grape shipments typically start anywhere from a few days to two weeks earlier than California’s first grapes that come out of the Coachella Valley. Most Mexican grapes cross the border at Nogales.
As the Yuma, AZ lettuce season winds down and Salinas prepares to gear up, use caution loading desert vegetables as quality problems are being reported.
Yuma lettuce shipments in particular are having quality issues due to higher than normal temperatures. The produce is showing some rib blight, rot and sclerotinia. This is occurring as there is up to a 20 percent increase in shipments for Easter. Easter is March 27, essentially coinciding with the start of the Salinas, CA. season for many grower-shippers. Until then, unusually warm weather in Yuma, AZ, is likely to affect quality for all lettuce items.
While Yuma, as well as the Thermal, CA area is finishing up on head and mixed lettuce, Santa Maria mixed leaf shipments have started about two weeks earlier than normal.
Salinas mixed lettuce and other vegetable shipments should get underway in light volume the week of March 28th, about a week ahead of schedule.
Huron lettuce shipments out of the San Joaquin Valley starts the last week of March and will continue for about three weeks.
The Salinas Valley has had a lot of rain recently that interrupted plantings of vegetables. Down the road apiece, this is expected to result in some shipping gaps in late May and early June.
Yuma, Iceberg, romaine, leaf, broccoli and cauliflower shipments – grossing about $5600 to New York City.
Will South Texas surpass Nogales, Az with imports of fresh produce from Mexico n a year?
Mexican fresh produce imports entering the U.S. through the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas increased 21 percent from 2014 to 2015, and 108 percent over the past eight years. And Pharr, Tx, will likely surpass Nogales, as the busiest U.S. port of entry late this year or in early 2017.
These are some highlights of a recent study of USDA data by Texas A&M University’s Center for North American Studies.
By comparison, Arizona crossings were up 13 percent and California crossings 12 percent from 2014 to 2015.
Over the past eight years, Arizona crossings are up 31 percent, California’s 50 percent.
In 2015, about 210,000 Mexican produce loads crossed through Texas, 147,000 loads through Arizona and 65,000 loads through California. Crossings at some Texas ports were particularly high in 2015. Imports through Pharr rose 36 percent, imports through Laredo 22 percent.
The big jump over the past eight years, meanwhile, can be attributed to a number of factors: improvements in Mexican infrastructure and highways; lower production in the U.S. (due to labor, water and other issues), higher U.S. demand for fresh produce; the Mexican government’s investment in the country’s produce industry; and U.S. shippers’ investment in Mexican production.
“Importers and distributors have been business savvy in shifting volumes to Texas to be in position to take advantage of the time and cost savings for delivery to Midwest and East Coast markets when coming through Texas,” said Bret Erickson, president and CEO of the Texas International Produce Association, in Mission, Tx.
The biggest highway improvements in Mexico is the 143-mile Autopista Durango-Mazatlan, which connects the growing regions of west Mexico to McAllen, Tx. The new highway opened in 2013.
The surge in Texas crossings has meant more Nogales-area distributors building facilities in Texas, as well as new companies opening up shop near Texas ports.
More infrastructure is needed, handle the bigger loads in South Texas. There’s also are complaints that produce warehouses there need to become more efficient in having loads ready for trucks that arrive on schedule for pick ups.
Shipments of many Mexican fruits and vegetables through Texas have increased significantly in recent years, but none more than avocados. Tomatoes are the volume leader, but avocados are now the second-largest commodity in terms of volume.
In 2015, 1.69 billion pounds of Mexican avocados were imported through Texas ports and were the top commodity coming through Pharr in seven months of 2015.
Texas isn’t the only U.S. state benefiting from increased production in Mexico. .
“For the Mexican produce industry, the growth in the import numbers across all states is impressive. With the sustained drought problems in the Western U.S., we expect to see even more growth in Mexico in the coming years, which should mean even more produce will be imported through west Mexico into Nogales,” said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Nogales-based Fresh Produce Association of the Americas.
South Texas and Mexican produce – grossing about $2900 to Chicago.