Retailers often begin changing the sets of their produce departments around the first of September, switching over to fall fruit. In the process, stone fruit, which is generally regarded as a summer fruit, sometimes loses its place on the shelf.

The retailers do that because “they are so used to doing that. That is what history tells them to do,” said Doug LaCroix, a salesman at Family Tree Farms Marketing LLC in Reedley, CA.

“The end of September, we will start packing our famous ‘Holiday Seedless,’ “ said Anthony Stetson, sales manager at Columbine Vineyards in Delano, CA.

“Holiday Seedless” is a registered trademark for a patented late-season red grape variety exclusive to Columbine.

“This year’s crop looks very nice,” Stetson said Aug. 7. “It’s got good size and good bunch conformation, and volume looks to be excellent.”

In late May the crush for transportation to fill Memorial Day orders was at a fever pitch. That proved to be a harbinger of things to come as June and July saw a very tight transportation situation.

In fact, recently Chuck Thomas of Thomas Produce Sales in Nogales, AZ, told The Produce News, “In May and June, I saw some rates I’d never seen before. Trucks were getting from $8,500 to $8,800 to go to the East Coast from Nogales. I heard of some $10,000 rates from Salinas to Boston and New England. It was unbelievable.”

Mark W. Seetin, director of regulatory and industry affairs for the U.S. Apple Association, headquartered in Vienna, VA, said the association was still gathering apple crop projections, but he noted that the association releases the U.S. apple projections at the 2013 Apple Crop Outlook & Marketing Conference, being held Aug. 22-23 at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago.

Peter Forrence, vice president of Forrence Orchards in Peru, NY, told The Produce News on Aug. 6, that there were no foreseeable glitches in the company’s current crop of apples.

“We were among the more fortunate in New York last year in that we didn’t suffer crop damage,” Forrence said.

“Overall, the state was down by about 50 percent. Our crop this year may be just slightly smaller than last year’s, but everything is in place for a good harvest, storage and enough high-quality apples to get us through to next summer.”

“This year we replaced the entire engine room that runs our full operation,” Lee Peters, vice president of sales and marketing for Fowler Farms in Wolcott, NY, told The Produce News on Aug. 12. “This was a major investment by the Fowler family. But it provides us with better controls, monitors and probes. We are very excited about the apples we’ll be bringing out of storage next spring and summer because this new technology will ensure that we’ll have the best quality fruit available anywhere.”