Capacity seems to be on everyone’s mind these days as truck space seems to tighten up under the ELD mandate, severe weather systems and a large increase in US port volumes; all of which have come to bear, concurrently. Fresh, refrigerated cargo is impacted more by carrier delays than any other as it is vulnerable to even the smallest conditional fluctuations. Needing optimum conditions to prolong shelf life, chilled cargo is more fragile than frozen and issues with timing, congestion or any other variation can painfully reduce the value of the cargo.
As ocean carriers consolidate into alliances that offer fewer sailings chilled cargo is at risk. Once cargo is delayed or the voyage timeline becomes extended, the freshness of those containers is put at risk and must be frozen to protect the value. Driver shortages, trucking capacity issues and weather problems each put a strain on the number of trucks available to pull containers out of the port and distribute them nationally. ELD bottlenecks where reduced time on the road shortens the allowable trip adds to the current driver frustrations, further impacting the availability of frozen and chilled cargo.
CFI is a leader in shipping and transportation of chilled and frozen cargo thanks to our fleet of reefer trucks and climate controlled warehouses. We work with sophisticated monitoring services to ensure temperature excursions are minimized and shelf life is preserved for the longest possible freshness. Our expertise on how the supply chain flows combined with our years of experience dealing with capacity issues through decades of logistics cycles grants us a breadth of knowledge to handle even the most complicated cargo.
For more information about climate controlled trucking or any other commodity, feel free to reach out to any of our CFI experts who are to serve and educate.
