Help! Did I kill my new katsura tree?

Drove it home from a nursery (1 hour drive) in back of pickup truck. It was lying down in the back. Thought it would be OK there. Lilac and Japanese red maple did fine. What should I do to try to save my Katsura? Totally ragged, losing leaves.
Help, please. I worked hard to find it, and now it might not survive!

Lessons learned...

Please take this in the spirit of the educational opportunity that it is meant to be. One should never transport a leafed plant (including conifers) without some sort of protection - canvas, tarp, topper, tonneau, etc. - that is fully secured to prevent wind-beating and dessication. Your description of outcome is/was entirely predictable.

You should keep your planted adequately watered for the duration of the coming growing season. You will have a forlorn looking plant for some time, until that tree grows some new foliage and abscises the ones you tortured. On very warm days when the plant is transpiring a lot, you can also syringe (hose down with water) the foliage to some additional benefit.

You didn't say in what condition your plant was purchased - other than already leafed out. Balled and burlapped? Container? Bare root?

You should also post some photos of this plant, as a cautionary tale to others that may follow in your tire tracks...

VV knows more about this than I do, but if I have enough space, I actually transport plants in the trunk as the weather warms and the sun is brighter. The back seat of a closed car, with sun exposure, can superheat and fry plants and bulbs, whereas I have transported many plants for an hour in the trunk of my car and they have arrived quite fresh. I did this many times last summer in 90 degree heat, since I was moving from one house to another. When I arrived at my destination I watered the plants and put them in a windowless garage for a day or so.

I also keep an old sheet in my trunk in case the plant does not fit and I must put it in the back seat. I slide the passenger seat forward, put the plants on the floor of the back seat, and drape the sheet over them.

Well, I panicked... The tree has perked right up. Yes, there are quite a few ragged leaves, but i've been babying it, and it looks like it will survive. A few days of cool, rainy weather helped too. I would have put it in the cab, but it was too big to fit in a car or the cab of the pickup. But, next time I'll bring a tarp.

You should still provide images, to help prove the point and the lesson. Far too few people realize this - till it is too late.

I see this all the time with landscape contractors, and I wonder who the unsuspecting client is who is paying quite dearly for substandard practices. Imagine the delayed effects when conifers travel hundreds of miles this way, get planted, and the customer doesn't see the result of such dessication till the foliage loses the resins in it and the brown is exposed months later.

It just ain't right...

My newly-bought and professionally planted Magnolia and Nellie R. Stevens hollies are testament to what VV says. There was breakage of branches, and then, about a month later, here come the brown edges of just about every third leaf. Never saw anything like this-thought they'd sent old trees.
I complained, of course, and some "expert" eventually came out to look at things.
Doggone it. By the time this "expert" came out, the trees had not only shown the ravages of transport and handling, but also their desire to live.
They all have blooms and I did nothing other than throw some Hollytone around them (couldn't help myself) and made sure they have about five gallons of water every other day. They are bigguns - the Magnolia is 20' tall and the hollies are about 15.
So, the "expert" is coming back in the Fall, after I followed directions of his and pruned the dead stuff off. There are holes, but there are blossoms. They'll be fine, but boy have I learned MY OWN LESSON. I'd surely have done a better job of it all!
And why have I put quote marks over the word "expert?" Because, dear friends, it's the TREES that are the experts, not US.

Oh yes, Gracye and VV, yes, it just ain't right.

One of the things I learned the hard way is that most planting crews know nothing. They took two carlesi compactums that were not in fact compactums and planted them so closely together that one killed the other. I could not understand why a littleleaf linden died after ten years until I dug it up and saw the mangled wires. 7 viburnums trilobums were planted so deeply that they rotted - I was able to save one. A large serviceberry was installed - it had canker on arrival. A Green Mountain Sugar Maple was put in a low, damp spot ($590 right there). A pagoda dodwood that dwindled down to one leaf - literally - before my hubbie and I dug it up (which was easy, beacuse it was installed so high it was leaning to one side) and reinstalled it in a proper location and gave it care. Ah, the 1998 installation. I won't go on about the 19 acid loving shrubs installed in a yard with an initial ph of 7.9. Happily, with reseach, and lots of ironite and compost, they thrived.

After demanding and getting several hundred dollars back (having spent far more) I started reading - mostly Dirr, but lots of sources. I have since planted dozens of shrubs and a few trees, after correcting the low, damp spot, and I haven't lost one. You would think people in the trade would do some basic research. The trees and shrubs are the BOSSES - but they are not that demanding. They just want a little love and respect. Don't we all?

Plants are very forgiving. Here is the cornus alternifolia that was a foot and a half tall and down to one leaf. Saved by "amateurs".

Lovely, DonnaMack. Great words as well. "Planted by fools, saved by Amateurs." Harrumph. I rest my case.

Amen!