Sourcing cucumbers
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What to buy
Pickling cucumbers are a different thing from slicing cucumbers and the difference is structural rather than cosmetic. They are bred with thinner skins, denser flesh and fewer seeds, and that is what lets them take up brine without collapsing. A slicing cucumber in a brine goes soft because it was never built to do anything else.
Size, and why too large is a named cause
Cucumbers too large for brining is listed in the published problem table as a cause of hollow pickles. The mechanism is simple enough: a large cucumber has a looser center, and brine reaching the outside before the middle leaves a cavity. Buying by size rather than by weight is the practical version of avoiding this.
The lapse between harvest and brining
A long lapse between harvest and brining appears twice in the published tables, as a cause of hollow pickles and again as a cause of shriveled ones. That is unusual: most causes produce one failure. It is the strongest argument available for buying local, because a cucumber that was picked this morning is a different input from one that traveled.
Where it comes from
Each source has its own failure mode. A grower selling direct gives you freshness and a variety you can specify, and ties you to their calendar. A wholesaler gives you volume and predictability and usually cannot tell you when it was cut. Growing your own removes the lapse entirely and adds a second business.
Whichever source you use, specify the variety and the size when you order rather than accepting what arrives. Both are things a grower can supply and neither is something you can correct in the kitchen.