- 500 truckloads of roses will leave Miami daily for the weeks leading up to February 14th.
- The US will spend $25.6 billion on Valentine’s Day this year. Flowers are her 37% of gifts.
- 91% of all flowers imported into the US pass through Miami.
A few weeks before Valentine’s Day, something strange happens in Miami, Florida. Cities are filled with flowers, and thousands of trucks flock south to redistribute flowers across the United States.
“There’s not a lot of freight in the South Florida market,” Robert Rouse, product manager at DAT Freight & Analytics, a truck freight market and data analytics platform, told Insider.. “But when that flower starts to move, it goes crazy.”
Miami is typically a “freight desert”, a market with more consumption than production. It’s produced in Miami and the surrounding area for most of the year, and there’s not much that needs to be picked up by truck and hauled north.
Everything changes when Valentine’s Day approaches.
The vast majority of Valentine’s Day roses and carnations come from Colombia and Ecuador.
Marco Bello/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Data from DAT Freight & Analytics shows that refrigerated truck (the type of truck that carries flowers) load increased 77% in the first week of February compared to the previous week. 500 truckloads of roses will be shipped out of Miami each day for his six weeks through February 14th.
U.S. consumers are expected to spend a record $25.6 billion on Valentine’s Day this year, and it’s projected to reach $23.9 billion by 2022. National Retail Federation Flowers accounted for 37% of gifts.
The overwhelming majority of Valentine’s Day roses and carnations come from Colombia and Ecuador, conveniently located just a few hours’ flight from Miami.Miami International Airport receive 91% of total imported flowers in the United States.
The city, which also sees fresh cargo such as strawberries and citrus fruits, happens to be one of the best equipped cities in the United States to handle refrigerated cargo.And because many flowers are placed another If you’re shipping by air and shipping to Asia or Europe, it’s better to send it to Asia or Europe and put it on a truck than to ship directly to big cities across the United States.
Seasonal holidays that cause destination trucking to surge in popularity are commonplace in the trucking industry. Valentine’s roses are to Miami what Christmas trees are to Oregon and North Carolina, or pumpkins to Illinois.
A worker unloads a box of imported flowers from a plane at Miami International Airport. Some of the fresh cut flowers are trucked across the United States and some are loaded onto separate planes for shipment to Asia and Europe.
Marco Bello/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The economic benefits of carrying cargo as fickle as roses require it to be well refrigerated and stored carefully at all times — the more difficult the cargo, the more cargo the carrier has to carry. is also an incentive for truckers to drive. Go south.
“For 11 months out of the year, there are people who haven’t thought about going to Florida in a million years,” DAT communications director Steven Petit told Insider. , see? ”
According to DAT Freight and Analytics, during the second week of February, there were 14.8 refrigerated freight available per available refrigerated truck in the Miami market.
If the National Retail Federation’s predictions are correct, this Valentine’s Day will be a record year for flowers and for truckers in Miami.
“Who knows that the flower market is going to be so hot this year and demand for trucks could be even higher,” Petit said.
