A Guide to Understanding Temperature Control for Fresh Produce Freight
Optimal temperature control can mean the difference between perfectly delivered fruits and vegetables and a spoiled load of produce. Understanding proper temperature-controlled freight techniques can save your company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost products, rejected loads, freight claims, and damage to your company’s reputation. Proper temperature control is vital to ensure fresh produce is safe to consume.
This guide aims to ensure cold chain logistics companies understand the importance of temperature-controlled freight, particularly when moving fresh fruits and vegetables. It explores the key challenges of shipping fresh produce, how shippers can overcome these complexities, best practices for handling temperature-controlled freight, and how technology is shaping the future of cold delivery service.
Identifying Key Challenges of Shipping Fresh Produce
One of the biggest challenges when managing temperature-controlled freight such as fruits and vegetables is the product's shelf life. Even the best-kept produce will go bad at some point — often sooner rather than later – so temperature-controlled transportation and storage service providers must keep produce shelf life in mind to maintain top quality and ensure the product is safe to consume. Great logistics providers will work with producers and retailers to ensure that produce arrives quickly and efficiently with minimal time in transit.
Adequate temperature control can dramatically extend produce’s shelf life. For items like apples or potatoes, proper temperatures can extend shelf life to 12 months or more.
However, temperature control comes with its own unique challenges. In most cases, temperatures must be kept in an exact range to prolong shelf life effectively. For especially delicate produce, like berries and lettuce, a temperature change of just 1 to 2 degrees can be enough to cause spoilage.
Temperature-controlled freight is not always about keeping fresh fruits and vegetables cold. Sometimes, when transporting fruits and vegetables during winter weather, the truck’s temperature-control system can be set to maintain a higher temperature inside the unit to prevent delicate produce from freezing.
Navigating the Complexities of Fresh Produce Shipping: Overcoming Key Challenges
With this level of precision in mind, it’s easy to imagine some of the considerations that cold chain logistics companies and shippers face when managing temperature-controlled freight. Here are some key challenges for transporting fresh fruits and vegetables, when you’re utilizing full truckloads (FTL).
Mastering Optimal Temperature Ranges for Peak Freshness
Maintaining temperature in a reefer truck is essential to ensuring produce stays fresh from the farm to its final destination. To accomplish this, produce should be packed properly to allow air to circulate freely around the produce. Shippers and drivers should ensure pallets are not packed too tightly or against the truck's walls.
Anytime the produce is being transferred from one mode of transport to another, such as from a port to a warehouse or from one truck to another, operators should maintain the correct temperatures and train staff on proper handling techniques. Using a food-focused 3PL, like GLT Logistics, can help ensure that all the people handling your produce are trained in appropriately handling fruits and vegetables. For sensitive produce such as berries, FTL may be the best option, as this type of shipment typically makes fewer stops for loading and unloading the freight.
Perfecting Precooling & Loading Techniques for Unrivaled Freshness
The temperature inside the reefer is not the only thing to consider when managing temperature-controlled freight. The temperature of the fruits and vegetables collected from the field also matters. The following example illustrates this point.
If you pour a bag of frozen ravioli into a pot of boiling water, the frozen ravioli will lower the temperature of the water. From there, it takes several minutes for the water to come back to a boil. A similar situation happens with produce coming straight from a hot field into a cooled reefer truck: the product's warmth raises the temperature inside the cooling unit.
To address this, many producers precool fruits and vegetables between picking and loading. Produce is picked and transported to a facility, where a cooling method brings the produce temperature down to match the range inside the reefer for the next leg of the journey. This helps ensure the truck’s cooling unit remains constant once the produce gets loaded.
Conquering Humidity Control: A Hidden Factor in Fresh Produce Shipping
While temperature is a relatively well-known factor in shipping fresh produce, humidity is less known but equally important when handling temperature-controlled freight. Just as a temperature excursion can damage produce, the wrong moisture level can compromise the quality and safety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Some products, like oranges and grapes, are best at 95% humidity, while others, like garlic and onions, should be closer to 65% humidity. Too much moisture can lead to mold growth or spoilage.
Tips to Improve Produce Longevity During Transit
So what can shippers do to ensure their produce is handled properly? Here are some best practices when managing temperature-controlled transportation:
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Propelling Fresh Produce Shipping Into the Future Through Technology
The fresh produce shipping industry is fast evolving with new technologies that offer smarter, easier, and cheaper ways to ensure optimal shipping conditions when moving temperature-controlled freight. Many tools can improve your fresh produce logistics through reduced spoilage and better visibility.
Next-Gen Temperature Monitoring Systems: A Game Changer
We’ve spent much of this article talking about ensuring that reefers maintain the proper temperature for transporting fresh produce. Better temperature monitoring systems are a natural extension of this focus. Temperature monitoring systems, like Tive’s Solo 5G trackers, can be placed in reefer trucks and containers to provide real-time visibility into the conditions.
These devices collect and send data to a cloud-based platform that sends an automated alert to shippers when temperatures vary outside the acceptable range. Not only can better monitoring enable your company to better maintain the temperature for individual trucks, but the data you collect can also help inform future shipments and help you find better ways to transport perishable produce.
Real-Time Alerts and Data Tracking: Staying Ahead of the Curve
Advanced tracking is quickly becoming a given when managing temperature-controlled freight— for a good reason. Tracking and real-time alerts make it possible to monitor your load every step of the way. Alerts can tell you if temperatures and other conditions change inside the truck or container or if the cargo encounters any unusual shocks. The accumulated data from tracking multiple shipments can also enable your company to evaluate optimal routes and pricing and improve your overall business plan.
Smart Containers and IoT Integration: The New Frontier
In this day and age, everything is getting smarter, even shipping containers. Like many home smart devices, smart containers enhance visibility into what’s happening with your containers, enabling you to know where your shipments are, the current conditions, and when they will arrive in port so that you can align drayage services accordingly.
Smart containers powered by technology from the Internet of Things (IoT) can do everything from monitoring humidity and temperature to sending real-time tracking data and alerting you to any shocks to the container.
The Ultimate Recipe for Success: Partner with the Right Logistics Provider for Fresh Produce Shipping
While technology is a crucial component of moving temperature-controlled freight such as fresh fruits and vegetables, the right people are also essential. Having skilled professionals with knowledge of temperature-controlled transportation and your specific needs on your side will make the difference.
GLT Logistics’ team of experts specializes in hauling fresh produce with a vast network of carriers well versed in shipping fruits and vegetables across North America and beyond, including cross-border services to Canada and drayage that serves Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Whether you’re shipping FTL temperature-controlled trucking or need drayage transportation to and from a port, GLT Logistics can help you maintain the quality and safety of your fresh fruits and vegetables.
GLT Logistics can provide long-lasting, trustworthy partners with consistent quality and service. GLT guarantees the highest quality service for your produce. Get in touch today to get a quote or discuss your shipping needs.