Best Practices for Efficient Refrigerated Delivery Services

Planning temperature-controlled deliveries are complicated because temperature excursions can adversely affect products' shelf life, leading to spoilage and lost sales. Therefore, maintaining the integrity and quality of refrigerated cargo is crucial to prevent customers' complaints. While industry regulations help guide refrigerated delivery services, it is vital to follow best practices. When used in conjunction with industry rules, best practices ensure that frozen products remain fresh during transportation. This post highlights a few best practices regarding refrigerated delivery services. 

Load Fast

The integrity of refrigerated delivery services starts the moment staffers begin loading frozen products into reefers. However, if loaders spend more time at a loading zone, the temperature of products begins to rise, increasing the chances of spoilage. The reason is that temperatures at loading zones are higher than cold storage or reefers. Notably, cargo should spend as little time as possible at a loading bay; hence planning is critical. For instance, ensure that all items are packed and stacked correctly before beginning the loading process. Additionally, there should be enough loaders to handle the amount of cargo coming from cold storage within the shortest time possible. Such preparedness helps maintain the temperature of frozen items.

Encourage a Wide Network of Carriers

Delivery delays resulting from issues beyond your control, such as reefer malfunction, can easily damage products in transit. Therefore, it is valuable to have a vast network of carriers offering refrigerated delivery services. It allows you to quickly switch to a different carrier to avoid time delays and damage of goods. In addition, working with a network of carriers makes it easy to choose special delivery services for handling highly specialised products such as vaccines. Most importantly, an extensive pool of refrigerated delivery carriers ensures that you meet refrigeration requirements for the different products.

Partition Reefers with PVC Strips 

Refrigerated trucks carry different frozen products with varying destinations. Unfortunately, as drivers deliver products to various destinations, warm air gets into refrigerated trucks and disrupts temperatures. However, partitioning refrigerated trucks with PVC strips prevents temperature variations. Just make sure that you arrange products in a truck based on their delivery destinations. For example, frozen products to be delivered last should be placed at the furthest end and separated from the rest using PVC strips. It ensures that temperatures in the different truck sections remain constant throughout a journey as long as the PVC strips remain undisturbed.

Reach out to a professional who provides refrigerated delivery services to learn more.