Who ships Christmas trees, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships christmas trees

Four wholesale growers from a field of roughly 15,000 US farms, including about 1,300 Fraser fir growers in North Carolina alone.

Ask for the shipping coordinator, and ask in September. Wholesale growers sell to retail lots, garden centres, big box chains and church groups, and they arrange the transport as part of the sale. This is one of the few commodities where the grower will happily talk logistics months ahead, because they already know their own worst problem is trucks in November.

Where it hauls

Two states cut more than half the national crop and they serve different halves of the country. Oregon is the largest at about 4.7 million trees a year, concentrated in the Willamette Valley around Salem, Corvallis and Aurora, shipping Noble and Douglas fir west and south, and a long way east. North Carolina is second at about 3.2 million, grown almost entirely as Fraser fir in the mountain counties, with Ashe, Alleghany and Avery carrying it, and serving the east coast and upper midwest. Michigan and Pennsylvania supply their own regions. The wholesale growers to know:

How to open

Committing early is the whole pitch. A grower whose entire year rides on a three-week delivery window values a truck that shows up more than a truck that is cheap, and they will say so.

Qualifying questions

• Van, reefer, or flatbed? All three carry trees and the grower will have a preference. Baled trees load into a 53 foot van at up to about 750 to a trailer. Long hauls sometimes run refrigerated to hold freshness. Ask what they ship on rather than assuming.
• What day does it have to be on the lot? This is the only question that really matters. Retail lots open the day after Thanksgiving and a tree that arrives on the Saturday has missed the weekend that pays for the year. Get the must-arrive date, not a window.
• How many trees, and what does it scale? Up to roughly 750 baled trees in a full trailer, though species and size change it a lot. Fresh-cut trees hold water and are heavier than people expect. Confirm the count and the gross.
• Is it loaded the same day it is cut? Usually yes, and that is the point. Freshness is the product. Ask how long between cut and load, and whether they expect the trailer pre-cooled or the doors cracked.
• One stop or a milk run? Some loads go to a single distribution point and some drop at six retail lots across two states. The second is a completely different rate and a completely different day. Ask before you quote.

When to call

September, before the cut. October is late and November is not a conversation, it is a scramble. This is the clearest plan-ahead commodity in the calendar: the harvest date is fixed by a holiday that does not move, every grower in the country needs trucks in the same fortnight, and the ones who sorted it out in September are the ones whose trees reach the lot on time.