Valentine’s Day roses turn Miami, usually a freight desert, into trucking’s busiest hot spot
Roses #Roses
Something unusual happens in Miami, Florida, in weeks before Valentine’s Day. The city fills with flowers and thousands of trucks swarm South to redistribute them all over the US.
“There’s not a lot of freight in the South Florida markets,” Robert Rouse, product manager for truckload freight marketplace and data analytics platform DAT Freight & Analytics, told Insider. “But when those flowers start moving, man, it gets crazy.”
Usually, Miami is a “freight desert,” or a market that consumes more than it produces. For the majority of the year, there aren’t that many things produced in Miami and the surrounding areas that need to be picked up by trucks and hauled up North.
That all changes as Valentine’s day approaches.
According to data from DAT Freight & Analytics, during the first week of February, the load volume for refrigerated trucks – the type of truck that carries flowers – increased 77% compared to the week before. In the six weeks leading up to February 14th, around 500 truckloads of roses leave Miami every day.
This year, US consumers are projected to spend a record $25.6 billion on Valentine’s day, up to $23.9 billion in 2022, according to the National Retail Federation and flowers will constitute 37% of the gift-giving.
The overwhelming majority of Valentine’s day roses and carnations come from Colombia and Ecuador, which are conveniently just a few hours plane ride from Miami. Miami International Airport receives 91% of all flowers imported in the US.
The city, which also sees fresh cargo such as strawberries and citrus, happens to be one of best equipped to handle refrigerated cargo in the US. And since many of the flowers will then be put on another plane, and shipped to Asia and Europe, it’s better to send them there and put them on trucks instead of sending them directly to the big cities across the US.
Seasonal holidays causing a sudden surge in a destination’s trucking popularity is common in the trucking industry. Valentine’s roses are to Miami what Christmas trees are to Oregon and North Carolina, or pumpkins to Illinois.
The economic benefit of taking up a temperamental cargo like roses, which need to be kept sufficiently refrigerated and delicately stored the whole time — the more difficult the cargo, the more the carriers’ gets out of it — is also an incentive for truckers to drive down South.
“There are guys who for 11 months outta the year would never in a million years consider going into Florida,” Stephen Petit, who handles communication for DAT, told Insider, “But from mid-January to mid-February, let’s go, you know?”
During the second week of February, there were 14.8 refrigerated loads available for every one refrigerated truck available in the Miami market, according to DAT Freight and Analytics.
And if the National Retail Federation’s predictions are correct, this Valentine’s day will be a record year for flowers, and for Miami truckers too.
“You know, who knows this year it may be an absolute gangbusters type of market for flowers and the demand for trucks may be even greater,” Petit said.