Are you also curious about the journey of our products?

How do our products get from the Farms to our customers? We will tell you more about this in this blog. We spoke with Bill Wheaton, the president of Premier Logistics. This company arranges everything related to the transport shipped by air of our products from Florida.

Can you tell us more about the company?
Premier Logistics is an international freight forwarder based in Orlando, Florida. We were established on 10 February 1992. Over the years we have offered various services, such as import customs forwarding, dry cargo shipping, bonded warehousing, Orlando International Airport Foreign Trade Zone management, climate controlled warehousing, local delivery services and various other support services. But our main priority has always been and still is the transportation of decorative greenery. In fact, over the past few years we have scaled back all our other activities in order to focus on our unique passion, which is the international shipment of decorative greenery from Florida.

We have developed very close relationships with all of the cut green suppliers in central Florida and have spent time at the ferneries helping out cutting and packing fern so that we can experience and fully understand all the effort that goes into producing one single box of ferns. These experiences have enabled us to really emphasize to the airlines and their vendors the importance of maintaining the cool chain throughout the journey from the farm to your door.

Where does your company stand for?

Our company stands for honesty, integrity and professionalism.

It is my belief that all employees should be excited to come into work and we try to make the workplace a more family-oriented environment that our staff truly enjoy spending time at rather than just a job.

Most of our current employees have been with us for 20+ years and it is my goal to ensure they are here until retirement.

Socially we support several charitable causes such as the American Cancer Foundation, Save our lakes, the American Society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, The Humane Society as well as New Beginnings women’s outreach.

What will happen with our products at the first moment you are involved?  

Every week we will receive notification from each WBE supplier of the following week's order that they will be sending, The supplier will let us know the number of boxes they intend to ship as well as the sizes of each box. The supplier will also let us know which day their particular order will be ready for pick up.

We will then consolidate all suppliers' orders onto one or more airway bills and determine how much air space we will need and decide which airline(s) will be best suited to utilize depending on their particular flight schedule and space availability. We would then send the airline a booking request reserving the appropriate amount of space needed. Once we receive confirmation of the booking request from the airline we will then produce a “pick-up” document notifying the supplier of the flight itinerary, day of pick up and the airline airway bill number, which they will use to produce shipping labels for each individual box. Throughout the week the suppliers may make additions and deletions to their orders and we would make the necessary adjustments to our capacity requirements with the airlines and subsequently reissue any required documentation to the airlines and the suppliers that have made any adjustments to their order.

Once all orders are finalized, generally a day or two before departure we will give our driver copies of the final pick-up orders so that he can plan his pick-ups and deliveries.

Our driver, Santo has driven for us since the day we started in 1992. He will generally pick up the fern from the farms in the middle of the night as he knows and is highly respected by literally everyone in “fern country” and has keys to all the supplier's coolers enabling him to pick it up anytime.

Once Santo backs into the fernery with our 53’ reefer trailer he will locate the pieces we are picking up and count all the boxes to ensure the counts match with his paperwork, he will then probe each pallet and notate the temperature on his paperwork. Once all manifested pieces are accounted for he will then proceed to the respective airport for drop off.

Once he arrives at the airport and backs into the dock doors, he will present his paperwork to the airline personnel to verify the booking and proceed with offloading the pallets of product. Each pallet is taken off the truck, weighed, x-rayed and then immediately placed in the airline's cooler, until such time as they are ready to build the aircraft “cookie sheets''. Our driver will remain at the cargo shed until all pieces are weighed, screened and placed in the cooler before departing to ensure the product is never left out and exposed to heat or sunlight.

Once we receive the actual weight of the product, we will produce the final Airway bill and enter all information into the United States export database via our software system. The airway bill, supplier commercial invoice and phytosanitary certificate issued by the United States Department of Agriculture are then transmitted to WBE as well as their clearing agent to notify all parties of the expected arrival details of the shipment.

How long have you been working together with WBE?

We have been working together since the day we started in business back in 1992, in fact, our very first shipment ever was to WBE ! I can remember it like it was just yesterday !!

What do you think are the advantages of WBE?

After working with WBE for close to 30 years, I can tell you that from my perspective the advantages are many. You have loyalty to the suppliers and vendors such as myself, This loyalty encourages the suppliers to ship their very best products and energizes our organization to source the most efficient and most cost-effective means of transportation available. Volume WBE has always been a leader in the amount of product shipped from Florida, this further encourages the suppliers and vendors such as ourselves to go above and beyond to ship the very best and source the very best transportation to reward this commitment.

The right people in the right places, WBE runs like a well-oiled machine, no matter what department in the company you need an answer from, you can be confident that you will be dealing with a professional that will have the answers you need. I have visited WBE several times over the years and have always been impressed with the happy and positive atmosphere throughout the organization, any company is only as good as its employees, they are any company's greatest asset….. Obviously, WBE has the right people in the right places. Leadership, all great companies need a strong leader and I don’t think I have ever met anyone more driven and passionate about the greens business than Peter Baak, he is an individual who truly loves what he does and his energy transcends throughout the entire organization.

What is your role within the company?

My official position at Premier Logistics is President, however, my role within the company is to do whatever job needs to be done, such as shipment processing, accounting and driving a truck to help pick up product whenever needed.

What does your day look like?

A typical day for me would be to immediately check emails when I wake in the morning to check for any issues which may have arisen overnight and prepare to action the same once I get into the office at 0800 each morning. Upon arrival at the office, I would action any emails flagged overnight then meet with our ops staff to discuss all bookings, their current status and help out wherever I can. We are always looking for more efficient and cost-effective transportation and I will check in with the various airlines to discuss their schedules and current rates to see if there may be any better opportunities than we currently have. Compliance with the TSA requirements as well as assisting TSA inspectors in the auditing of our shipment docs that they may have randomly selected for compliance verification. If everything is running smoothly operationally then a good portion of my day is spent with the usual day-to-day task of running any business such as Insurances, human resources, accounting, equipment maintenance and essentially tending to whatever issue may arise on any given day.