COOL CABBAGE: A Boone produce trucker adjusts to clients' demands for a greener Earth.

• Author: Barkin, Dan

The greening of America extends to the daily transport of cabbage, up and down the East Coast, by Boone based Hollar & Green Produce. Keeping that produce cold for Walmart and other customers is a challenge that has traditionally involved burning diesel fuel to run refrigeration units on tractor-trailers.

Now, Hollar & Greene has figured out how to reduce its reliance on diesel and related carbon footprint, aided by the Surry-Yadkin Electric Membership Corp. In a pilot project, trailers filled with cabbage are cooled by equipment powered by electricity, not diesel. The electric transport refrigeration unit, or eTRU, is loaded behind the driver's cab and plugs into equipment at company warehouses.

The shift has cut costs for Hollar & Greene and made it more energy efficient, says Tony Greene, the vice president of transportation. His father, Dale Greene, co-founded the company with his father-in-law, Lige Hollar, in 1963. Tony's two brothers, Jeff and Tim, are sales executives.

As a leading cabbage shipper, Hollar & Greene works with farmers from Florida to Canada. It has two main processing and warehouse hubs, in Mount Airy and near St. Augustine, Florida.

"We start in Florida," says Tony Greene. "That's January to May. Then Georgia. Then Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, western New York state, which is a great producing area, then, if needed, Canada. By the end of the year, we're back to Florida."

Trucks get loaded with pallets of cabbage in the morning when crews are available. The trailer can sit up to 12 hours waiting on a driver. The company owns 50 trucks and 75 trailers.

Walmart wants "the pulp temperature of the cabbage to be 36 degrees, so that's why we have to have that unit running continuously, to reach and maintain that pulp temp," says Greene. Someone checks the temperature with a probe. If the cabbage isn't the right temperature, the load will be rejected.

The shift to electricity reflects a changing ethos. "Our customers are almost requesting that we reduce our carbon footprint, but they're rewarding us for that," says Greene. Becoming a favored vendor because of such...