Temperature-Controlled Transportation-What You Need to Know
When you pay someone to transport your goods, it’s important to ensure they make the proper steps to ensure they are not damaged or spoiled during transport. For products that are labeled as perishable goods, they may require a temperature-controlled environment to maintain their integrity, quality, and safety. Ensuring freight is maintained properly will not only help manufacturers retain profitability but also curate a positive and trustworthy relationship between clients and shippers.
What is Temperature-Controlled Freight Shipping?
Temperature-controlled freight shipping involves transporting perishable items in an environment that maintains a specific internal temperature to prevent spoilage. The types of items that require refrigerated trucking may include;
- Flowers
- Food (fruit, chocolate, meat, etc.)
- Chemicals
- Pharmaceuticals, and more!
Logistics of Temperature-Controlled Transportation
Want to know the logistics of this particular mode of transportation? Let’s dive deeper:
Temperature-controlled packaging is a distribution method specifically engineered and designed to keep perishable products at a constant, stable temperature from production to reaching their final destination. During the shipment process, monitoring the stability of products is an essential step.
Monitoring the status of products during temperature-controlled transport enables drivers and carriers to maintain control of internal temperatures during shipment. Specialized handling also plays a role as shipping temperature-controlled items requires the right packaging. Finally, ensuring all the right packaging and shipping steps are made, will maintain regulatory compliance during the transportation process.
It’s important to know that external factors may affect the internal temperature of products, including weather, transportation type, potential damages from theft, shipping delays, contamination, and storage conditions. Before the truck leaves the facility, make sure your transportation provider checks every box before giving approval.
Types of Temperature-Controlled Transportation
Passive Shipping Systems: In this system, a specific internal temperature can be maintained for a defined period of time the subject of anticipated maximum and minimum external temperatures used during transportation.
Active Shipping Systems: Like Passive Shipping Systems, the main difference between the two is Active Shipping Systems don’t require any qualification or approval to maintain a specific internal temperature.
Refrigerated Logistics: This mode of transportation is specifically designed to use temperature-controlled trucks (or Reefs) with a built-in refrigeration system to cool shipments at a regulated temperature during shipment.
Frozen Logistics: Similar to Refrigerated Logistics, this mode of transportation is designed to use extremely cold temperature-controlled trucks with a built-in freezer system to maintain very cold regulated temperatures of perishables during shipment.
Ambient Logistics: This mode of transportation involves multi-modal services for air, road, sea, and warehouse freight transportation. This may involve multiple areas of transportation and distribution where a combination of import and export services may be required to ensure efficient delivery.
Determine the Most Efficient Logistic Solution
How do you determine the right logistic solution? It’s simple, really. First, calculate your cargo’s temperature stability with this formula: tolerance levels +/- “x degrees”. From there, you will have a better understanding of which mode of transportation would fit your needs best. If your transport involves shipping perishable products, the overall cost would be higher than shipping non-perishable products.
The Importance of Temperature-Controlled Logistics
Using temperature-controlled transportation comes with a lot of positives that will benefit your organization as a whole. For example,
- Temperature-controlled cargo helps increase a product’s shelf life during transport.
- Using a reefer transport not only maintains the quality of each product but ensures compliance with any regulatory standard.
- Using temperature-controlled freight shipping upholds product quality and safety and helps reduce spoilage and waste, which as a result will improve customer satisfaction.
- Temperature-controlled transportation will maintain product quality, which results in balancing inventory and helps drive profitability.
We Offer Temperature-Controlled Logistics for Your Sensitive Freight!
The journey that goes into transporting temperature-controlled products comes with a lot of regulations and logistical procedures to ensure its safety and maintenance. When using a transportation provider that is trustworthy and reliable, you feel comfortable knowing your freight is in the best hands. Not only does Lone Star provides timely route updates so you know where your shipment is during transport, but every driver is heavily vetted to maintain proper communication and uphold quality standards from Point A to Point B.
Ready to start your journey? Fill out our Shipper Request Form below or contact our 24/7 bilingual support team with any questions at 833-562-3722! Do you prefer to email? Reach out to us at info@lone-starlogistics.com to learn more.
