Christmas Tree Loads...Do they pay well?

Van load I did was loaded to the doors, I'm guessing no more than 25k.

 

The one tree load that matters is the National Tree. How do they choose the lucky sumgun to haul THAT to DC?

 

Lucky?

 

Loads i hauled from the Portland, OR area were 650 - 750 6'-8' trees, handloaded by crew at the farm. Trees were stacked up to approx 2/3 height of the trailer. Then we stopped and had 1500# of top ice blown in before heading to the Walmart drop yard in Laredo for taking into Mexico. Never had any problems with the trailer bowing out and the trailers were returned washed out.
The only non Mexico load i pulled was from the same area, no ice, and was a 4 stop Lowe's load to Al and MS. Didn't have a problem getting a washout, but it was $125.

 

I don't like getting the floors wet and/or doing washout with my dry van. In fact with my new one it never has had a washout and never will get one as long as I own it. If you look in the manual it tells you never to washout a wood floor van. Now I know many will scoff at that.

However with my old van which had done many nursery and other wet messy loads requiring washouts, you could see day light coming up through hairline cracks in the wood floors.

This was caused by expansion and contraction of moisture from washouts. That day light coming through those cracks cost me a good reload of bottled water one time. They would not load the trailer. Said their heavy 20,000 automated robot loaders would break through the floors because of those cracks.

Whether that was true or not was beside the point because I didn't get the load. I wouldn't haul Christmas trees in a nice van trailer. If I had a junker I might. Don't really care for nursery loads in anything unless i'm desperate and hungry but for sure never in my van trailer no matter what.

 

yeah I don't know why anybody would need to wash out a dry van that had trees in it. 15 minutes with a good fine bristle broom and some sweeping compound from Home Depot and it's good as new.

 

I've never hauled Christmas trees so haven't seen the mess. I've hauled plenty of floor loaded nursery loads with trees and plants of all kinds in black buckets. They're always wet messy loads that leave a lot of mud/potting soil everywhere along with little critters like snails. Washout is pretty much a necessity with those.