President’s Message

Happy July!

I hope that the spring has been good for business and you have kept safe. It has been another wild spring in our business. Weather has been typically atypical, and once again we face similar issues to what we have seen the last couple years or so. Labor is still one of the biggest concerns. Finding the people to help us get through spring rush has been a difficult challenge throughout the country. Covid issues have resulted in more chaos even as we finally come through this pandemic. For one reason or another there is unwillingness to actually come to work for some people. In certain states regulations have affected loading of trucks due to restrictions on how many people can even be inside a truck at one time. That has slowed the amount of trucks that can be loaded per day. Early season storms affected the plants we need and increased the demands for plant material.

Trucking and trucking freight rates have been frustrating to say the least. Prices are high for all kinds of reasons, but mostly supply and demand. According to one trucking survey at one point mid spring there were 19 loads for every 1 truck coming out of the Pacific Northwest. Often plants would be pulled to docks in expectation of a scheduled truck, but no truck would appear to take the load. The lure of a better rate or an easier run I suppose. It has gotten a little better lately. Thank goodness for small favors.

As the green industry fights though another spring we continue to move forward, striving for solutions. Every day brings another challenge and every day we get through another solution has been earned. Soon we will finally see each other in person and do what we have always done; share our problems and our solutions and with that comes the great thing about the green industry but more importantly the green industry in Nebraska. We learn and get better together through our challenges.

We appreciate your continued support and membership. You should have received your membership renewal the beginning of June. I am looking for your ideas on increasing our membership and what you would like to see NNLA add for more programing so we can continue to become better at our craft together. I encourage you to mark your calendars as we send out the event schedules for field day and our winter conference this December.

I am very excited about what we have planned already.

Stay tuned!

Jason Kuehl, NCNLP, NNLA President