Obviously, planting or heeling them in is the best option. Barring that, my next choice would be to prop against side of barn and surround with bales of straw or hay. The leaves could work but unless a very thick layer of leaves surrounding and on top, I'd worry about the amount of cold protection they offer.

I do have some straw, I'd have to check how many bales. I also have something like 16-18 Kraft bags full of shredded leaves in the barn (in addition to the big pile outside). That would work, right?

Probably :-)

It is the difference in climates but here, B&B stock is overwintered at area nurseries by heeling into sawdust.

Hi mxk3, I have overwintered with straw bales, as GG48 suggested and it worked great. My son brought me some of those kraft bags full of shredded leaves last fall. I dumped on top of my compost pile, thinking bags would disintegrate, but they stayed intact all winter. Based in that, I think you could use them instead of (or in addition to) straw bales.

Well, it turns out my friend is going to hold them for me until spring. The rootballs are not a manageable size from what she described (needed a forklift to load). She tried to loosen the dirt mass off the roots to lighten them and get them to a size DH and I can handle, but the root mass was too well-established on a couple of them and the dirt wouldn't budge. We need to problem-solve our way out of this, but we're now heading into a stretch of single-digit overnight temps so will have to tackle the problem in the spring.

This wasn't well thought out. Oh well worst case I'm out $60 and she gets three beautiful trees because I'm unable to transport or plant them, my gift to her (she has a tractor and backhoe so she can plant them for herself).

It's actually kind of comical...