My personal, non spruce experienced guess is they'll live. Small tree transplants around the same yards have an easier time than mail order trees or B&B. Trees live on some percentage scale. Meaning if you move them while dormant then 19 out of 20 will make it. Now? I dunno, 90% or 9 of 10? Of course if 100 degree heat starts next week then all bets are off.

Yes, road salt can be an issue. If you are in a place that is down wind, and the winds are strong, white pine foliage is more sensitive to browning from this kind of spray/drift than Norway spruce. I don't know how white spruce reacts. As for the salt getting into the soil--I don't really have a lot of information about the relative sensitivity of various kinds of trees. If there is a lot of drainage of salt laden water off the road into the area where the tree roots would be, you should try to create a ditch that will divert the water away. But I know of one area where there are a number of beautiful NS growing where I would think the salt runoff would be considerable, but the trees are completely unaffected. But how trees tolerate salt runoff will depend on the kind of soil and other conditions. As for the appearance of white spruce--you should try to identify those growing in your area and see how they look. Of course all soils in any area are not the same, so what you see in one area may not be what you will get in yours. At my timberland in western MD in the mountains (Z5) white spruce can be nice trees. They have a more grayish or whitish cast to their foliage than the typical NS. But a healthy white spruce does not usually have "sparse" foliage. but that may be the case in your area. But for my puropses, I would have white spruce only for some variety only after I have all the NS and maybe some other spruces, I want. A white spruce does not have the attractive weeping tendency in their branchlets, and although the color of their foliage can be nice, I prefer the more rich and dark green of NS. It is perhaps a little strange, but NS will outperform native spruces in all of the northeast quadrant of North America, and has better disease resistance also. It is a very hardy, durable, and adaptable tree. Quite wonderful, really. The only concern is to get trees that are well adapted to your local climate--NS grows across a wide range of Europe including a wide range of climates. The best source for trees in your area may well be trees grown from the seed from healthy trees in your own area. I have found that with some persistant inquiries, it is usually possible to track down the seed source for trees offered. --Spruce

Sherwood: Well, you are taking some rather big ones. I dug up about a dozen 2 to 3 foot red spruce and translanted them. Well before bud break. 100% survival. I am not sure about taking the less full foliaged ones--usually the more full the foliage, the more vigor, and the more ability to stand the shock of transplanting. You could, of course, always trim to thin out the foliage a bit if you can't get enough root mass to support the tree as is. --Spruce

I never got the Zones myself, personally. Gardening in west central Georgia (Zone 7A) is nothing like eastern Pennsylvania (Zone 7A). Somehow I doubt you'll see too many weeks with sustained 15 degree nighttime temperatures in west central Georgia, nor weeks of blanketed snow (which you'll still see here). Yet the zones are identical simply due to an occasional extreme in temperature in that part of Georgia and our extreme being closer to 0 and tightly bordering Zone 6? Then trace along Zone 7 and look at all the places it encompasses. Identical weather through the year, identical enough to mean the same gardening and agricultural habits and methods? Yeah, I think not. :-) When given a zone in the lawn forum, I just ask for more information. It's practically useless--it says nothing about actual sustained winter temperatures, rainfall, snowfall, and so on. Frankly, I don't rely on it much in terms of plant survival, either, and look up reports on how things actually do. Zone 3, for the US, is at least small enough that I'd believe things might be relatively similar in some cases.