Lipman Family Farms uses leased trucks to help deliver transportation needs

As the largest open field producer of tomatoes, Lipman Family Farms has big-time transportation needs.

Max Press, who manages Lipman’s fleet of trucks, is the supplier’s point person to make sure its operations in U.S., Mexico and Canada run efficiently.

Press recently described to The Packer how Lipman uses leased trucks to help the company meet their transportation needs.

Lipman has a fleet of 80-plus refrigerated trucks to help move its produce supply, and operates a mix of owned and leased trucks, with PacLease being the company’s preferred lessor, according to a news release.

Press said leasing forces turnover and makes sure equipment isn’t used for too long.

The company started work with PacLease in 2017. 

“For us and our dynamic, leasing serves a purpose,” he said. “At the end of the day, it always comes down to a financial decision; what makes the most sense,” he said. “We started off slow and kind of ramped up from there.”  Press said that evaluation process is ongoing, as market and economic conditions change. “We keep looking at it, checking the numbers and making sure everything makes sense.”

Over the past few years, Press said the percentage of Lipman’s leased trucks has been going up, with the majority of  trucks leased now.

“It just kind of depends on the location,” he said. “Some locations own more equipment, some lease everything, so it just kind of depends on where they were in the lease cycle of acquisitions over the years.” 

PacLease provides 54 Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks — primarily Kenworth T680s, T880s and Peterbilt Model 579s through 10 PacLease locations, according to the company. Lipman Family Farms runs local delivery in select locations and soon will be taking delivery of six Kenworth T680 Next Gens with 76-inch sleepers and five Kenworth medium-duty straight trucks, the company said.

Supply chain issues have led to a larger lead time to put leased equipment in place compared with before the pandemic, and the cost of leased equipment has also gone up more rapidly in the last couple of years,” Press said. 
“All manufacturers are all in the same situation; if you need something quick, you are going to be shopping on the used market just to fill the need."

Leasing does deliver predictability, he said.

“With leasing, we know our costs each month, and can retain capital since we don’t need a large outlay of cash,” Press said in the release. “And it forces us, in a good way, to have a regimented trade cycle, to keep us in newer equipment. It also frees us from maintenance headaches and improves our vehicle uptime.”

Having better equipment can help make a difference with driver retention, Press said, noting the importance of giving drivers a nice work environment and reliable trucks. 

There can be a lot of waiting for loads, and that's one reason why Lipman Family Farms equipped the majority of its trucks with large sleepers, according to the release. This way, drivers can relax during their down time, or have a place to sleep should they run out of hours. Most are also equipped with auxiliary power units, for engine-off heat and air conditioning. 

Typically, a PacLease unit will work within a 500-mile radius from its home base. A normal day will have a truck go to a warehouse, pick up produce and deliver to a distribution center for repackaging, the release said. Then, after its sorted, packaged and put on pallets for customer orders, the trucks head to wholesalers and retailers.

“We normally will gross out in weight versus cube out,” Press said in the release. “We can load up to 1,600 boxes of tomatoes onto 20 pallets for deliveries. The day cabs we have in our fleet will average around 60,000 miles per year, with our sleeper units going upwards of 120,000 miles per year. The East Coast is particularly heavy for us, and we’ll make numerous deliveries per week to our customers.”

Most trucks are powered by Cummins 15-liter engines and driven through automated 12-speed transmissions. Since multiple PacLease locations are used, some Lipman trucks will go into a nearby PacLease location for service, while other PacLease locations will send mobile service vehicles to handle preventive maintenance at Lipman’s terminal. 

Since demand can fluctuate, Press said he appreciates how he can transfer PacLease units around to different locations based on “current” demand.

“That really gives us flexibility,” he said.  “That’s one advantage of the national network that PacLease offers.” 

Lipman typically runs its trucks about 100,000 miles per year,  Press said, with most trucks finished with their five-year leases at about 600,000 miles or so.