Who ships watermelon, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships watermelon

Head offices. Every one of these ships from wherever the harvest currently is, which over a season means several states.

Ask for the shipping desk, and ask where they are cutting this week. Watermelon shippers are used to moving. Many farm in several states specifically so they can hold a retail programme for five months, and their freight problem is that every few weeks their origin changes and their carrier base does not follow.

Where it hauls

A moving origin, and that is the whole story. The deal opens in south Florida in April, works up through central and north Florida, crosses into south Georgia around June with Cordele as its centre, then rolls on through the Carolinas, the Delmarva, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois into August. The same shippers follow it, which is why a shipper list here is a list of companies rather than a list of towns. The growers and shippers to know:

How to open

Offering to follow the season is the pitch. A carrier who will reposition with the harvest is worth more here than a cheaper one who only runs one state, and the shipper knows it.

Qualifying questions

• Bins or cartons, and is it loaded loose? Watermelon moves in bins, in cartons and sometimes hand-stacked loose. Loose loading is slow and bruises fruit. Confirm the pack, because it changes the unload time completely.
• Reefer or ventilated van? Watermelon does not want deep cold; below about 50 degrees it suffers chilling injury. Plenty moves on ventilated van in cooler weather and reefer on a high setpoint in summer. Ask what they spec.
• What does it scale? Fruit is dense and loads run heavy, especially in bins. Get the target gross and the bin count, because it is easy to build an overweight load out of something that looks like half a trailer.
• Where are you cutting this week? The single most useful question on this commodity. The origin moves through five or more states in a season and the answer tells you which lane you are actually quoting.
• Is this a retail programme? Most volume runs to retail on a programme with appointments and firm arrival dates. Promotional weeks around holidays spike hard. Ask which week they are building for.

When to call

March and April, before the Florida deal opens. The season then gives you five months of work if you can move with it. The other advantage of calling early is that the shipper is planning the whole run north at that point, so you are being written into a five-state plan rather than asked to cover one load.