Consolidated Flower Shipments, Inc.—bay Area v. Civil Aeronautics Board

In the San Francisco Bay area the growing and marketing of flowers is a substantial business. Air freight transportation has enabled the growers in recent years to sell their flowers in markets formerly denied them.

This case is concerned with some of the aspects of the interstate shipment by air of flowers. The grower, of course, could do business directly with an air carrier without using an air freight forwarder, but if he did so he would be shipping his commodity without the advantage of the better rates one can obtain with a larger bulk. Freight forwarders have been long familiar in the rail and trucking industries, gathering small lots together for shipment and shipping the aggregate at the better rates available for quantity, thus making money for themselves and offering an attractive money saving service to customers. Freight forwarders or consolidators are finding they can render a service in connection with air freight which is attractive to shippers and especially so to growers and shippers of fresh flowers. The conventional type of consolidator-forwarder would seem to be the respondent, Airborne Flower and Freight Traffic, Inc., which has submitted itself to…