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Trucking Industry

Florida in Tomorrow's Sun

1925

One of Florida's chief bulwarks is the trucking industry, which has been developed in many parts of the state on a colossal scale. Producing at a time when no other section can, Florida is destined to become the great truck-producing state of the Union. Not only are her soils and climate peculiarly adapted to the growing of garden produce, but she has that greatest of all assets, a constant supply of artesian water, it being possible to sink a well at a depth of from ten to three hundred feet almost anywhere in the state. Already Florida leads all of the states in the production of winter truck. Last year she sent North in solid vegetable trains and by express: Ten thousand cars of tomatoes; 8,O00 cars of celery; 4,500 cars of potatoes; 4,250 cars of cabbage; 2,000 cars of lettuce; 1,500 cars of cucumbers; 1,600 cars of peppers, and 5,000 cars of mixed vegetables, the approximate value of these products being about $17,000,000.

In many sections of Florida intensive farming has been developed very highly in some particular phase. Sanford, in Seminole County, although raising lettuce and other produce, has specialized in celery, as has Manatee County, on the Gulf. The Hastings District, in St. John's County, has become famous for its potatoes; Dade and Marion Counties for their tomatoes; Hardee. Sumter, and Orange for their cucumbers; Orange and Seminole for their lettuce; Polk for its cabbage, and Lee for its peppers and eggplants.

One of the advantages of trucking in Florida is the ability to raise by rotation three or four crops a year. Celery can be followed by tomatoes, and tomatoes by cabbage, cabbage by corn, and corn by peanuts, cowpeas, velvet beans, or some other legume.

Source:
Excerpt from: Agassiz, Garnault. "Florida in Tomorrow's Sun."
Suniland, Nov. 1925, Vol.3, No.2., Pgs. 37-45; 88-94; 113-133