Jimmy Mac sits down with Dean Croke for a detailed look at seasonal freight pressure in the Pacific Northwest. Dean draws on his background as a former owner operator with more than two million miles on the road and his work as Principal Market Analyst at DAT Freight and Analytics. He explains how Christmas tree season creates fast shifts in demand, tighter capacity, and higher rates across key lanes.

Dean walks you through helicopter harvesting, a process created at Noble Mountain Tree Farm in Oregon. Helicopters lift bundled trees from the fields and drop them at central points every thirty seconds. Noble Mountain operates more than four thousand acres across four farms in the Willamette Valley. The season starts with long haul and international loads that move toward places like Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Texas. Reefers handle temperature sensitive shipments. Around that same time, wreaths move out for Wreaths Across America ceremonies on December 13. Containers also head toward Hawaii for retail orders.

Domestic demand rises in early to mid November. It tightens seven to ten days before Thanksgiving. Rail piggyback trailers help move high volume loads to large Western markets when truckload capacity shrinks. Some Douglas fir loads get covered in a ton of ice at a third party location before heading to Southern California. During the peak harvest, growers run seven days a week. More than sixty truckloads can move on the busiest days. Spot rates can rise by up to twenty percent in those three critical weeks before Thanksgiving.

Dean also shares quick facts that matter when judging market pressure. A Christmas tree takes seven to ten years to reach typical height. Roughly three hundred fifty million trees grow on farms nationwide. About twenty five to thirty million get harvested each year. A truck carries about six hundred trees. That works out to about fifty thousand truckloads. Oregon and Washington produce close to one third of the national supply.

Learn more at https://www.dat.com

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