Trucks are a familiar sight on the wine roads of Napa Valley, especially around harvest time.

Commuters and visitors may be annoyed by the big rigs rumbling down Highway 29, but they are seeing a vital part of the wine industry in action.

Trucks move grapes from vineyards to wineries and transport empty bottles to wineries. They haul finished wine to warehouses, and they take bulk wine from a location where it is stored to one where the wine is bottled. They haul barrels, they carry cases of wine to distributors throughout the nation and carry cases to nearby ports where they are loaded onto ships for export.

MKF Research’s 2005 study of the local wine industry stated transportation contributes $7.9 million toward the local economy each year, and wages associated with trucking add another $4.9 million.

The biggest transportation player in the Napa Valley is Biagi Brothers, with its fleet and warehouses in the Napa County Airport area.

Over the course of a year, Biagi trucks haul about 25 million cases of wine, and transport an average of about 163,000 gallons of wine each day.

According to Greg Biagi, president of the family-owned business, the firm handles all distribution responsibilities for two of the largest wine firms in the world — Fosters Group and Constellation. Local wineries that are part of those beverage giants include Beringer Vineyards, Etude Wines, Franciscan Oakville Estates, Robert Mondavi Winery and St. Clement Vineyards.

Biagi Bros. is soon to add another major player when a contract with Santa Rosa-based Kendall-Jackson goes into effect. Biagi said he expects construction to begin this spring on a new 650,000-square-foot warehouse in American Canyon for the Kendall-Jackson account.

At present, the company operates more than 1.5 million square feet of warehouse space in Napa for Fosters, Constellation and about 60 smaller wineries, and has a major distribution facility in Benicia. It also has warehouses in southern California, Washington, Florida, Oklahoma and Virginia, and distributes to just about everywhere in the nation except in the Northeast.

When the American Canyon facility is completed, Biagi said Napa Valley will become the largest overall distribution center in the system. Currently, a warehouse in the Southern California city of Ontario holds that distinction.

Many smaller trucking operations serve the valley, as well, including like Paul’s Trucking, on Silverado Trail in Napa. Operations Manager Joe Stornetta said the firm carries about 1.5 million to 2 million cases per year, and hauls about 12,000 gallons of bulk wine per day. The company also carries empty bottles to wineries, full and empty barrels to and from storage and even moves winery equipment for clients.

Paul’s serves 200-300 clients, and Stornetta said, “We have lots of smaller (wineries) up in the hills. We started smaller and are small, so we try to take care of the smaller people, too.”

Dad was a trucker

When Greg and Fred Biagi Jr. started their business in 1977, they were following in their father’s footsteps. Fred Sr. ran a trucking company called Walkup Merchants in San Francisco, and both boys worked there as youngsters. They were raised in Santa Rosa and worked out of the Santa Rosa terminal, and after the company was sold to an Australian company, Fred Sr. was diagnosed with cancer.

When the sons started their business, they sold their home and bought two trucks — “I drove one and Fred (Jr.) drove the other,” Greg said.

Their first customer was Beringer Vineyards. Greg said that although the business was run out of Santa Rosa, they didn’t have a place to house the trucks, so they parked them at Beringer’s facilities in St. Helena.

“Beringer grew and we grew with them,” he said, and added, “In fact, every one of our customers have grown and we have grown with them. We haven’t had one (client) that’s been in trouble.”

Warehousing operations eventually moved to Benicia because there was pressure on them resulting from the number of trucks on the road in St. Helena. Once in Benicia, the company started hauling beer because the Anheuser-Busch brewery was in nearby Fairfield.

Expansion into Southern California was next, and other parts of the nation followed.

National presence

Wine accounts for about 50 percent of Biagi’s overall business. The largest segment of the other half is beer — Biagi handles nationwide distribution for Anheuser-Busch and Corona and carries about 200 truckloads of Budweiser per day. Nestle is another major client, with Biagi hauling Calistoga sparkling water from the bottling plant at the north end of Silverado Trail.

Biagi said Anheuser-Busch is very particular about how beer is handled — it must be distributed quickly and without human hands touching it, so custom trailers were built that have conveyor belts. Empty cans are loaded onto the belts, taken to the Fairfield brewery where they are filled, and then the full cases are returned to the truck on the belts, all untouched by human hands.

In addition to distribution, Biagi Brothers also provides some packaging services for Beringer Vineyards, which is owned by Fosters. Two-bottle packs in shrink-wrap are prepared at a warehouse in Napa, and the company aids its customers with compliance requirements.

Each state has different requirements for case labeling, and stickers with the obligatory information are placed on each case at Biagi’s warehouse.

The business is pretty well split 50-50 between beer and wine, but the nature of the work for the two products is slightly different. “We have more volume in trucking beer, but more warehousing and work in wine,” Biagi said.

Biagi said the company operates more than 300 tractors and about 900 trailers, plus a dozen tankers. It also has about 40 flatbed trucks to haul grapes to wineries during harvest, and Biagi said the company also operates 10 super dump trucks for hauling sand and gravel.

The fleet represents a major investment. Tractors can cost $100,000 each, trailers are $26,000 and tankers run about $85,000. The Budweiser trucks with the conveyor system cost $85,000 each.

The company employs about 700 people nationwide, with 100 of them in Napa Valley, and the local payroll is expected to increase when the American Canyon facility is up and running.

Like Paul’s Trucking, Biagi Brothers will continue to be a family affair, as Fred Jr. has two daughters and Greg has a son working in the business now, and Greg’s other son is expected to join the business when he finishes school.