Trucking links tomato fields to tomato processing facilities. Morning Star works hand-in-hand with their affiliate, The Morning Star Trucking Company, to ensure efficient logistics. As part of the pack plan, The Morning Star Trucking Company makes a highly detailed plan for the entire harvest season. They also make provisions for unforeseen events--fields that don't ripen on schedule due to weather, problems with transportation infrastructure (such as traffic and road construction), and other events. Morning Star Trucking is one of the most efficient transportation companies in the world, utilizing the latest technological advances in communication and logistical planning. Morning Star Trucking is also the largest tomato trucking company in the world, transporting well over two million tons of raw processing tomatoes per year.
Tomato tractor-trailer configurations used by Morning Star Trucking maximize the amount of raw processing tomatoes carried. Law mandates that the maximum allowable weight (Gross Vehicle Weight) not exceed 80,000 pounds. The logistic planners at Morning Star Trucking seek out the lightest, most fuel efficient tractors to pull specially-designed double trailers. All vehicle operators of The Morning Star Trucking Company undergo rigorous training before the season starts.
A Morning Star Trucking Company tractor hooked into an empty set of tomato trailers.
The logistics planners at Morning Star have minimized the distance most of their truck operators must drive per trip by working to locate all fields within a close radius of each respective processing facility. Drivers become quickly and intimately familiar with the routes, and are able to safely and efficiently transport many more tons per person-day than the average tomato trucker.
A driver's view of the open road.
 
Leaving the pad with a full set.
The typical routine of a tomato trucker has the trucker receiving a computer-generated dispatch from the dispatch office (the harvesting company informs the trucking dispatch office of when and how many sets of full tomato trailers are ready for dispatch), then departing to the field with an empty set of trailers. Once at the field, the trucker deposits the empty set of trailers, hooks onto the designated full set, and drives the full set to the processing facility. The ideal logistical scenario has each empty set of trailers arriving just as a full set of tomatoes is being deposited on the "pad" (a designated location at a field where empty and full tomato trailers are dropped off and picked up) from a harvester. This form of "Just in Time Inventory Control" minimizes the time fresh tomatoes sit idle, preserving freshness and quality. Because Morning Star Packing works very closely with harvesting and trucking, Morning Star consistently exceeds industry norms of efficiency, freshness, and quality.