Wholesale Flower Delivery Across the UK

Cut flowers are sold on how long they last in the customer's house, and every hour spent warm in a vehicle comes off that number. Nobody sees it happen — the stems look fine on arrival and disappoint four days later, by which time the florist gets the complaint and the transport is long forgotten.

T&C Logistics moves floristry stock for wholesalers, UK growers, market traders, retail florists and event florists. Early morning runs from market and import hubs, restocking through the week, and the peak weeks where the whole trade needs vehicles at once. Companies House records over 4,000 active UK companies in floristry and flowers. Quotes from £50 (ex VAT), quoted in full upfront before you book.

Why does temperature matter more than speed?

Because vase life is consumed by warmth, not by distance. Most cut flowers are held near 2-8 °C through the supply chain precisely to slow that consumption, and every break in it costs days at the customer's end.

The mechanism is straightforward: warmth accelerates respiration and water loss, and a stem out of water is already losing. A load that spends three hours at ambient in summer has aged more than one that spent eight hours chilled. Which is why a slower chilled run frequently beats a faster warm one.

Not everything needs a refrigerated vehicle. A short morning run in an insulated vehicle at 6am in March is entirely adequate for most stems; the same run at 2pm in July is not. See our temperature-controlled service, chilled courier and the refrigerated van page.

Why is everything so early?

Because a florist has to make up before the shop opens, and a wholesaler has to break down an overnight import before the florist arrives. The whole chain is stacked into the small hours.

The typical rhythm: imports land overnight, wholesale markets trade from the early hours, florists buy or receive between five and eight, and the shop opens at nine having already made up the day's orders. A delivery at ten has missed the point of the day entirely.

That makes flower work a genuinely unsocial-hours service rather than a convenience. We run early and overnight as standard, and vehicles are ULEZ-compliant for London market work and GPS-tracked so a wholesaler can see the run.

What does the load look like?

Buckets, boxes and trays — tall, wet, unstable and easily crushed. A flower load is one of the least forgiving things to stack badly.

Related: wedding courier and nursery and garden centre delivery.

What happens in peak weeks?

Everything, at once. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day compress a substantial share of the year's volume into a few days, and the whole trade competes for the same vehicles in the same window.

The pattern is predictable to the day and still catches people out. Volumes multiply, imports increase, florists take on extra staff, and transport capacity does not expand to match. Wholesalers and florists with a standing arrangement get vehicles; those calling on the Tuesday before Valentine's frequently do not, at any price.

Christmas is different in shape — longer, bulkier, driven by trees, wreaths and foliage rather than by chilled stems — but the same capacity logic applies. Book the peak weeks when the calendar is set, not when the orders arrive.

Can you handle event and wedding floristry?

Yes, and it is a different service from wholesale supply. Event work is made up, fragile, time-fixed and irreplaceable — nothing about it suits a shared circuit.

Made-up arrangements travel braced individually rather than packed, and they go to a venue with an access window rather than to a shop with opening hours. Wedding work has a ceremony time that does not move, and funeral work has a service time that matters more than any commercial deadline we handle.

These are dedicated runs with the vehicle allocated to the job, planned around the venue's access. See our wedding courier service and event logistics for the wider event picture.

Do plant health rules apply to cut flowers?

Some plant material moved in trade requires a plant passport under GB plant health rules, and imported consignments have their own requirements. That paperwork belongs to the supplier, not the carrier.

The position differs between cut flowers and plants for planting, and between domestic movement and import. Potted plants and young plant material are generally the ones that need passports; many cut stems do not. The distinction is the supplier's to make, and the Animal and Plant Health Agency is the authority.

What we do is carry the consignment with its documentation intact and not interfere with it. A consignment arriving without paperwork it should have had is a problem for the receiving business, and it is far cheaper to get right at packing than at delivery.

Can a circuit serve several florists?

Yes, and it is how most wholesale delivery works. One vehicle covering eight or ten florists from a wholesaler costs a fraction of individual drops, and the early slot suits everyone.

What makes it work is a fixed sequence and known access. Florists are frequently on high streets with loading restrictions, in market halls with their own rules, or in units behind a shop with a rear door nobody mentions. Establish it once and the route is stable.

The reverse leg is worth planning too: buckets, trolleys and trays are assets that accumulate at the florist end and need collecting. Building it into the same visits costs almost nothing and prevents the slow disappearance of equipment that every wholesaler recognises.

Do you deliver to supermarkets and concessions?

Yes, and they run to the host's goods-in procedures rather than a florist's back door. Supermarket flower concessions and in-store florists have booked delivery windows, a service yard and their own paperwork.

The constraints are the ones every retail delivery has: a height barrier at the yard, a booked slot that ends whether or not you are unloaded, and a goods-in office that will refuse a delivery addressed to the concession rather than the store. Get the delivery reference right and the rest is routine.

The timing question is sharper than in general retail because the product is perishable. A slot at eleven for stock that needed to be on display at eight is a slot that costs a day's sales, and the concession usually has no cold storage to hold it in meanwhile.

What about imports and hub collections?

Much of the UK trade runs on overnight imports arriving at a hub, and the collection leg from there is where the cold chain is most often broken.

The pattern is that a consignment lands, sits on a dock waiting for collection, and warms while it waits. The transport company that collects promptly protects the vase life that the grower and the importer have already spent money preserving; the one that collects at nine has quietly undone it.

Where a wholesaler is collecting from a hub or a market, the value of an early, reliable collection is larger than the price difference between carriers. Vehicles are GPS-tracked so a wholesaler can see the run rather than phone about it, and we work the pre-dawn hours this trade actually operates in.

Do you carry dried, artificial and sundry stock?

Yes, and it is the easy half of the trade — no cold chain, no clock, and it stacks. Dried and preserved stock, artificial stems, foliage substitutes, foam, wire, ribbon and packaging all travel as ordinary freight.

The one handling point is crushing. Dried and preserved material is brittle and worth considerably more than it weighs, so it travels above the wet stock rather than beneath it, and never under buckets.

Because it is not time-critical, sundry stock is the natural thing to consolidate onto a scheduled run rather than pay for separately. A florist ordering sundries alongside a weekly flower delivery pays almost nothing extra for the carriage.

What does wholesale flower delivery cost?

Priced per circuit for regular runs and per job for event work, quoted upfront, with fuel and goods-in-transit insurance included.

From £50 (ex VAT). Final price depends on distance, vehicle, urgency and time — quoted in full upfront. Related: food industry hub and chilled courier. Call 0121 720 3841 or use our contact page.