Lettuce Work: My Weekend Delivering Fresh for Florette
Two Florette day shifts, a refrigerated Renault and a trailer bright enough to count as one of my five-a-day—my weekend keeping fresh produce moving.
Some weekends are built around the campervan, the bike or a drone battery charged and ready to go. This one was built around two Florette day shifts, a refrigerated trailer, a serious quantity of lettuce and the quiet responsibility of getting fresh produce where it needed to be. I spent the weekend driving for Florette—and discovered that salad has a much bigger transport operation behind it than the innocent little bag in the supermarket suggests.
THE LORRY THAT ADVERTISES ITS OWN LOAD
There was no mistaking what this outfit was carrying. The white Renault tractor unit looked smart and businesslike; the trailer behind it was wrapped in enough green leaves to make the whole vehicle resemble a rolling salad bar. It is one of those combinations that catches the eye before it has even moved.
For a driver, though, the bright artwork is only the outside of the job. This is temperature-controlled food transport. The vehicle, the refrigeration equipment, the load security and the timing all have to work together. A bag of leaves may look simple on a supermarket shelf, but it has already depended on growers, production teams, warehouse staff, planners, loaders and drivers all doing their part properly.
That is one of the things I still enjoy about HGV work. You get to see the hidden machinery behind ordinary life. People buy salad without wondering how it arrived fresh and on time. The answer, at least for part of this weekend, was me and a very leafy trailer.
FRESH MEANS THE CLOCK IS ALWAYS RUNNING
General haulage can sometimes forgive a little waiting. Fresh produce is less philosophical. From the moment it is picked and packed, the clock is running. Keeping it chilled slows that clock down, but it does not stop it. The work therefore has a particular rhythm: checks completed, temperature protected, paperwork right, trailer secure and wheels turning when they should be.
Two weekend day shifts brought their own atmosphere. Bright daylight showed off that extraordinary leafy trailer, while the roads and industrial estates still felt different from an ordinary weekday. Inside the cab it remained a proper working day. Mirrors, junctions, vehicle position, delivery instructions and the steady awareness that a fully loaded articulated lorry demands your full attention do not take the weekend off.
There is satisfaction in that. It is not glamorous in the usual sense, but it is useful. Fresh food does not appear by magic on Monday morning. Somebody has spent the weekend doing the daytime checks, driving the miles and keeping the cold chain moving while everyone else got on with their Saturday and Sunday.
Fresh produce waits for nobody. Lettuce has a schedule, and apparently I was on it.
A TRAILER FULL OF LEAVES
Open the trailer and the scale of it becomes obvious. Crates are stacked high in blue, black, grey and the occasional rebellious red, with green leaves poking through every ventilation slot. Up close it is less like delivering neat supermarket products and more like transporting a small, well-organised field.
Those ventilated crates have a practical job. Fresh produce needs protection without being sealed into a warm plastic box. Air has to circulate, the stack has to remain stable and everything must survive loading, transport and unloading in usable condition. The stray leaves scattered across the floor are a reminder that this is real produce, not tidy scenery arranged for the side of the trailer.
It also produces one of the more unusual sights in haulage: opening the rear doors and being met by a wall of salad. I have carried plenty of different loads over the years, but few announce themselves quite so enthusiastically.
THE DRIVER’S SIDE OF COLD-CHAIN WORK
Refrigerated work rewards a calm routine. Before setting off, I want to know the vehicle is roadworthy, the coupling and lines are correct, the doors are secure, the load is restrained and the fridge is doing what it should. During the journey, smooth driving matters—not only for fuel and safety, but because stacked produce appreciates fewer sudden demonstrations of physics.
Arrival is another deliberate sequence. Position the vehicle properly, follow the site rules, keep communication clear and never let familiarity make the job casual. Loading bays, pedestrians, yard movements and reversing areas all demand patience. The quickest driver is not the one making a dramatic entrance; it is the one who completes the job safely without creating another problem for somebody else.
That old-fashioned professionalism still matters. Check it, secure it, deliver it and hand it over properly. Technology helps with navigation, temperature monitoring and communication, but the basic standard remains the same as it has always been: the driver is responsible for the vehicle and the load while they are out on the road.
WORKING SUNDAY—LETTUCE HAVE A MOMENT
Of course, spending a Sunday surrounded by lettuce makes resistance to terrible jokes completely pointless. I could claim I rose to the occasion, but that would be the wrong salad ingredient. I could say the work was all very fresh, although the humour clearly was not.
The truth is that I enjoyed the change. Different vehicle, different product and a useful job completed while most people were doing something more recognisably weekend-shaped. HGV driving has always offered these odd little windows into how the country actually functions. One week it is pallets or plant machinery; this weekend it was enough greenery to make the trailer look as though it had reversed through a hedge.
By the end of it, the job had been done, the produce had kept moving and I had acquired three photographs, one video and an unreasonable number of lettuce puns. Not a bad weekend’s harvest.
THE ROAD BEHIND THE SUPERMARKET SHELF
The next time I see a bag of Florette in a supermarket fridge, I will probably look at it differently. Behind that clean packaging is agriculture, processing, refrigeration, logistics and a chain of people working to very tight standards. The final road journey is only one link, but it is an important one.
That is the story of this weekend: not an epic expedition, not a dramatic breakdown and not a thousand-mile adventure. Just a working lorry, a perishable load and the steady pleasure of doing a necessary job properly. Sometimes the everyday journeys are the ones that explain the most.
And yes, after an entire weekend of it, I still ate my greens. It would have felt rude not to.