Who ships lettuce, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships lettuce

Both ends of the same season. Several of these farm in Arizona and California and simply follow the crop.

Ask for the traffic desk or the cooler. Leafy greens move through grower-shippers who farm, cool and sell, and the cooler is where the truck actually gets tendered. Salad plants are a separate and more scheduled business than whole-head lettuce. Receivers are retail distribution centres and foodservice, and they do not pick the carrier, so the shipper is who buys the freight.

Where it hauls

Two valleys, six months each. Yuma County, Arizona from about November to March: the Yuma Valley, the Gila Valley, Wellton-Mohawk, and Bard just over the California line. The Salinas Valley, California from about April to October, with Salinas, Gonzales, Soledad and King City, plus Oxnard and Huron covering the shoulders. The same companies farm both ends and many of the same crews drive between them. The growers and shippers to know:

How to open

The transition weeks are the opening. Both moves are the one moment in the year when a shipper's normal carrier base is in the wrong state, which is precisely when a new number gets tried.

Qualifying questions

• What is the setpoint, and is it a mixed load? Leafy greens run just above freezing, around 34 degrees, and they are unforgiving. A mixed load with anything that wants a different temperature is a claim waiting to happen. Confirm the setpoint and what else is going on the trailer.
• Vacuum cooled and how long ago? Lettuce is vacuum cooled after cutting and the clock starts there. Shelf life is measured in days, not weeks, so ask when it was cooled, not just when it loads. A late truck on this freight is a rejected truck.
• Whole head or value added? Cartons of whole-head lettuce and cases out of a salad plant are different businesses with different receivers and different appointment discipline. Ask which one, because the salad plant is far tighter on schedule.
• What is the appointment at the receiver? Most of this goes to retail distribution centres on firm appointments where a miss means a reschedule days out on a product that does not have days. Get the window and the penalty before you commit a truck.
• Are you running out of Yuma or Salinas right now? It changes twice a year and the answer tells you whether you are quoting a desert lane or a coastal one. Anyone who works this freight will assume you know the transition is coming, so ask it that way.

When to call

September and October for the Yuma season, and February and March for the move back to Salinas. Those two transitions are when the freight is genuinely up for grabs. Calling in the middle of a season means quoting overflow behind carriers who committed months ago, which is real business but a much worse seat.