For many Oregon growers of woody material, it’s not uncommon for plants to take six, eight or even 12 years to grow before they’re ready to ship. That’s years of watering, fertilizing, pruning and general care.

But all that can be for naught if the plants aren’t loaded into trucks carefully, kept at the proper temperature and treated gingerly as they make their way out of Oregon and across the country to their final destination.

“We grow some plants upwards of 12 years, and the last thing you want to see happen is for something to go wrong in just a few days of the plant leaving the nursery,” said Todd Nelson, co-owner of Bountiful Farms Nursery Inc. (Woodburn, Oregon), a grower of grafted conifers and ornamentals, espaliered fruit trees, plant art forms and topiaries. “You can have taken care of a plant for years, but the most fragile time of its life is the transportation. With poor loading or poor unloading practices, you can have a plant become a complete loss in a matter of days or even minutes.”

Indeed, a refer truck that’s blowing freezing air directly onto a plant, a load of potted plants that’s not been secured or a careless worker who lifts a tree off a truck by its branches can be all it takes to destroy a plant — and lead to a damage claim from a customer.

Such claims can be costly to nurseries who, like Bountiful Farms, spend years and countless resources raising plants to sell and ship to customers all over the U.S. And costly not just in dollars and cents, but in the valuable reputation nurseries spend years building up as a go-to source for top-notch nursery materials.

As a result, it pays for nurseries to go the extra mile to ensure that the plants they’ve invested so much in make it to customers healthy, in great shape and not likely to result in a damage claim.

“Oregon growers spend so much time in R and D and committing space and land and time growing product,” said Joel Mandel, operations manager, West Coast, for Northland Express Transport, a nursery-focused shipping company with offices in Oregon and Michigan. “You don’t want to cut corners on the final piece, which is transportation.”

Cause behind the claim

Circumstances that can lead to a customer — like a garden center, home improvement store or retail nursery — filing a damage claim can vary, but there are some common issues that come up more than others.

One of the major ones: too much direct cold air inside a refrigerated truck. It’s one of the biggest issues in part because so much of Oregon’s nursery crop gets shipped out of the state and needs to be kept in certain temperature ranges for optimal health.

K&M Distribution Inc., a transportation broker headquartered in Rogue River, Oregon, has about 90% of its business in nursery products. Most of those need to be shipped in refer trucks.

“Dealing with nursery stock is a lot of responsibility because it’s not a clothing or retail item, it’s a time sensitive, live product,” said Matthew Frederick, logistics coordinator at K&M.

Mandel said a malfunctioning refer could end up blowing air that is too cold directly onto plants.

“It could be something as unfortunate as a torn chute, which is in the equipment itself,” he said. “Instead of having more controlled air, it’s more like frozen air that comes in and causes frost damage.”

Temperature can also come into play as truckloads of nursery products make their way out of Oregon’s climate into other regions of the country. Dale Parra, sales manager for Truck Transportation Services (Wilsonville, Oregon), which specializes in shipping nursery stock, said not adjusting the temperature inside a refer truck before entering a new climate zone can cause significant damage.

“You don’t want the refer temperature to be more than 30 [F] different than the outside temperature,” he said. “If it’s 95 [F] in the summer where you’re delivering them, you need to make sure you are running at 65 [F] about 12 hours before you get there. You can’t have a big difference in temperature or you’ll kill [the plants].”

Improper loading of nursery goods onto a truck can also lead to damage — and claims. Crews loading and unloading plants can break limbs, causing irreparable harm. Loads that aren’t secured properly can shift as a truck starts and stops, and heavier items stacked on top of more fragile ones is a recipe for disaster, as is a truck that’s been overloaded.

“You also have to make sure the nurseries, when they’re loading, they don’t block the air flow,” Parra said. “You have to have air circulating.”

Taking — and giving — credit

When an end customer does file a claim because plants have arrived either damaged or dead, Nelson said Bountiful Farms will usually ask for photographs as evidence and to determine if it’s a plant health issue or one related to loading or unloading.

“We’ll evaluate and decide if a credit is due,” he said, “but if there is damage, we are quick to issue a credit.”

But Nelson said Bountiful Farms also takes lots of steps to prevent damage in the first place. Doing so has given the nursery a damage percentage of just .02% of everything that gets shipped out.

“We take a lot of pride in that,” he said.

Nelson said there’s a big training focus on quality control and on loading trucks as full and secure as possible. That’s especially important at Bountiful Farms, as many of their plants are fragile. The nursery actually has six loading crews, who have been packing containers for years.

“It’s truly an art to load a truck,” Nelson said. “Every load is different. Each one is literally a jigsaw puzzle. We have a special group of individuals who really know how to do it, how to physically and mentally look at it. Some people don’t have the knack or know-how. I don’t load trucks, and there’s a reason I don’t do it — because I’m not good at it.”

Loading a container properly also means securing loads with straps or, in some cases, building walls out of wood to keep things from shifting or knocking into other customers’ loads. Nelson said Bountiful Farms also invests a significant amount of money in packaging material to ensure plants arrive undamaged.

Keeping track

Another way to help avoid damage claims comes in the form of technology. In recent years, high-tech tracking devices have been developed that can be inserted into a refer truck to monitor everything from location to temperature. Some of the sensors provide real-time data and alerts should the temperature inside a refer decrease or increase. If that happens, drivers can make adjustments to keep the temperature where it needs to be.

Trackers are also good because they can provide downloadable histories across the entire journey of a refer. If plants arrive at the other end damaged, that history can show if there was a period of heat or cold caused by an incorrect temperature setting.

“If a load goes to the East Coast and you don’t put in a tracking device, you never know what may have happened,” Nelson said. “You have to spend a little money, but it’s a huge insurance policy to be able to know where there could have been an issue.”

Working with a qualified broker who knows reputable carriers is also a wise move when trying to limit damage claims. Mandel said Northland Express Transport has been in the business long enough to know who they can rely on. They always turn to carriers with high standards for safety and shipping, who have up-to-date equipment, insurance in good standing and more.

“We use the tried and true who know the industry,” he said. “It’s important to make sure you’re working with companies that screen for good carriers, with good safety scores, good equipment and safe drivers.”

On top of that, Mandel said it’s helpful to gather and record as much information as possible about a shipment, from the bill of lading to the driver’s name and trailer number. Training receivers, such as garden centers and wholesalers, to jot down or photograph anything that looks amiss is also a good step.

“The more information you have, the easier it will be to work your way through the process if a claim does come up,” he said.

And finally, Nelson said that creating a culture where a nursery’s team feels like they are invested in the process from start to finish makes people want to do a good job, to be careful when moving and loading plants, to do everything they can to make sure the plant they’ve been taking care of for years arrives and brings a smile to the customer’s face.

“I think it’s really creating a culture of caring, where you act as if you were the customer on the other end and you want to be happy with this tree when it arrives,” he said. “We spend a lot of time here creating that culture and going through and pointing out how much everyone’s done for this one plant. We sit down and include names. It makes it more real, and everyone truly cares the more you let them know they are part of the process. They treat the plant as if it was theirs.”

From the November 2024 issue of Digger magazine | Download PDF of article