Behind the Scenes - Wholesale Plant Delivery

 With a bit of help I recently delivered a truck load of wholesale plants to an East Bay Nursery. Here's a peek behind the scenes showing the process and a few lessons I learned along the way.

One task I under estimated was the length of time it took to pull plants from my nursery. For smaller, previous orders this hadn't been obvious - for this larger order it probably took me the better part of a day to pick out suitable plants.

Selecting a Group of Agave ellemeetiana "Santina" for the order

 

As a one person operation I found it useful to roughly group the plants by size in a staging area the day prior to loading.

Staging some of the smaller plants for loading

 

It was also useful to stage any "dangerous" plants separately 

Some plants just clearly are not going to play nicely with one another in the back of a truck over miles of bumpy roads. It's convenient to have these grouped separately prior to loading. 

 

More staged plants

Another task that seemed to take longer was simply making sure I had the correct number of plants for each species ordered. I made sure to double check counts before loading and then spot checked counts while loading (for peace of mind).

Some plants, like the 1ga Aloe speciosa shown in the background above, start to get too big for online retail sales. Packaging them and shipping via UPS etc becomes less than economical both from a $ cost but also a handling time cost. The same goes for plants with delicate, recurved leaves like the Aloe vanbalenii shown above which may end up damaged if shipped in a cardboard box. Delivering them in the back of a truck to a wholesale customer is easier and will likely end up as a better deal for the consumer - although that is admittedly debatable. 

 

Staging some medium sized plants

 

Loading a 20ga Aloe tongaenesis "Medusa" with help from my sons

 Big plants are heavy but also need to be loaded with care to minimize breakage. I called in a few favors from 2 available sons as this truck did not have a lift gate. That is another lesson - when shipping larger plants make your life easier by getting a truck with the right equipment.

The tree aloe pictured above is not one I grew - it came from San Marcos Growers. I was able to buy a few at a discount and still offer them at a wholesale price. As you can imagine there are transit costs involved getting the plant from Santa Barbara to Halfmoon Bay and then more shipping costs getting the plant to the retail nursery. Because growing a plant to this size takes years there are "holding" costs built in as well e.g. leasing sq ft to grow the plant etc.  The economics of plant pricing deserves an article of it's own although I'm likely not the best person to explore the topic.

 

Thinking about how to position the plants to avoid damage in transit

 

Strategically loading smaller plants in flats next to larger plants to avoid contact during shipping turned out to be a good choice. The flats also also help to prevent larger 1, 2 and 3ga sized plants from falling over during the trip.

 

 

An easy way to keep trouble makers separated

I've received orders in which plants have ended up sawing each other in half during transit. To avoid that issue, and because these are bound for special plant sale this weekend, I used a bit of free packing material to keep plants from touching as they drive over potholes etc.

 

Fully loaded and ready for the road

 

To help prevent shifting of top heavy plants I also used some old milk crates (I always have a bunch of these floating around the nursery because they are so handy).

 

Offloading plants into the destination nursery's staging area

 The staff at the retail nursery were very helpful unloading plants. Overall everything went smoothly - plants delivered safely and will hopefully find their forever homes soon.

 

Can anyone guess which retail nursery will be selling these plants this long weekend?