Summer 2026 Week 8 Newsletter
Howdy Folks,
Soon we will be going to pick up a brand new box truck! We just got word that it is ready and waiting for us. We have never bought a new truck before. We are going to Ohio. We tried to get one in Pa, but they didn’t have a 2026 only 2027, and it was going to be $15,000 more, so a two and a half hour drive sounded like the price was right. $15,000 is 3,000 bunches of beets in gross profit! We usually look at expenses in bunches or weight of vegetables. Funny right, but this is the reality. How much work will it take to pay off something?
We knew that we needed a truck, when last fall we were seeing more and more rust and holes in our 2016 box truck, and we had a hunch that it wasn’t going to pass inspection this July, and we were right. It didn’t pass and it’s going to be many thousands of dollars to fix, and there just aren’t that many people around that fix chasis on box trucks anymore. So we are in luck. Thankfully we were thinking ahead and had a new truck on order. We were looking at used trucks, but they all had high miles and no warranty. We put around 25,000 miles on our truck every year between delivering CSA Tuesday - Friday, and then the farmers markets Saturday and Sunday. So it made sense for us, driving so many miles to get a new truck. Being that it is more efficient and will most likely last us many many years with us taking good care of it. We have had two box trucks for some time now. As at peak season we take two box trucks to the farmers market. Then it’s always great to have a back up truck in case during the week, when one needs to get work done we still have a truck to do deliveries in. We have yet to have a market back up, so this can make life a little stressful.
A couple of weeks ago our newest box truck, our 2019 broke down 1 mile from the squirrel hill market. Chris called me in a panic, “You’ve got to come in the other truck, we broke down”...luckily we had our other truck at home sitting empty and idle. So I drove to the city we emptied one truck and filled the other, then got all the food to market. After a $1200 tow back to New Bethlehem, and a week and a half in the shop, we luckily have our newer truck back on the road. We have yet to see this bill come in. Wild that this fiasco happened just after having it pass inspection, get new tires on it and an alignment!! It was a bad fuel injector! So hopefully this puppy gives us a couple more years of hard work, toting veggies over the rivers and through the woods a little longer.
Transportation is a wild thing. A very essential part of farming. Growing the food is one thing, but then getting it to the people is a whole other ball game. We thank you all for doing the last leg of the journey, by attending the farmers markets or coming to your CSA location.
Your Farmers,
Chris, Aeros, and the Who Crew
Chris in the field seeding the fall storage carrots. This five gallon bucket is full of pelleted carrot seed, 500,000 seeds to be exact.
Here are the pelleted carrots seeds in the hopper of our tractor mounted 3 gang Jang seeder. It sows three rows at a time. We purchase pelleted seed because the seed is more evenly distributed and therefore it is one less step in the cultivation process and we don’t have to thin them.