Notes from the Field

June: The Tomato Express

When you see a truck pulling a huge trailer full of tomatoes, your mind immediately goes to the tomatoes on the bottom of the pile. What about them?

"They’re just fine," laughs Jesse Adams, chief executive officer of A&A Transport Company, Inc., of Los Banos, California. "They’re loaded in a way that distributes their weight evenly, so there isn't nearly as much pressure on them as you'd think."

And there you have a glimpse of the gentle art of transporting freshly harvested tomatoes, something the folks at A&A have been doing for S&W® for nearly five decades. The company is responsible for delivering tomatoes from the fields of the San Joaquin Valley quickly and directly to the S&W® processing facility in Hanford, California—a more complex operation than meets the eye.

Go where the tomatoes are. "We're ultimately responsible for keeping a steady flow of tomatoes headed to the S&W® facility," says Jesse. "If that supply is interrupted during the harvest season, it's a very expensive problem." Shutting down processing, even for a short time, leaves workers idle and requires that all equipment be cleaned and re-sterilized, among other time-consuming and costly measures. "If a field doesn't ripen on time, for instance, and the tomatoes simply aren't available," Jesse explains, "we have to be flexible enough to relocate equipment and transport tomatoes from other parts of the region, and do so quickly."

A&A places trailers in the fields in anticipation of the harvest. The harvested tomatoes are loaded into large fiberglass bins that have special food-grade interior coatings designed to be easy to clean, and not to affect the flavor or aroma of fresh produce. The bins rest atop double trailers for trucking to the processing facility.

So, how do you get a few thousand pounds of tomatoes out of a fiberglass bin without turning them into ketchup? Here's a hint: Tomatoes float! After the tomatoes undergo an initial inspection, the bins are filled with water, and the tomatoes literally float out and into flumes that carry them into the processing facility.

Then, the bins are washed and head back out to the fields to collect more ripe, delicious S&W® tomatoes. And what does A&A carefully shepherd after the tomatoes have all been harvested?

"Carrots," Jesse says with a smile. "Lots and lots of carrots."