Cold Chain Transportation Capacity Procurement and Management

Whether it’s an ice-cold lemonade or something stronger, the heat makes cold refreshments more enjoyable and rewarding. However, it’s not easy to maintain ideal cold chain transportation temperatures, especially during the hot summer months.

Delays and disruptions threaten yields, diminish quality, and generate waste. For shippers, securing capacity for cold chain transportation can make or break their peak season.

This article highlights how leveraging digital freight procurement keeps cold chain transportation moving to deliver the right cost at the right time.

Keeping it Cool During the Dog Days of Summer

Cold chain transportation is essential for perishable goods such as food, pharmaceuticals, and certain chemicals that require specific temperature ranges to maintain their quality and safety.

During summer, the food cold chain faces heightened challenges due to higher ambient temperatures and potential transport delays. As temperatures rise, so does the demand for cold chain food and beverage products like ice cream, meats, and other perishables, tightening up capacity within cold chain transportation.

The food cold chain also has varying peak seasons, causing demand spikes that tighten the refrigerated transport capacity. Capacity strains often leave shippers in the challenging situation of balancing cost and securing capacity.

Integrating Digital Freight in Cold Chain Transportation

Digital freight platforms leverage advanced technology to streamline the entire freight management process, ensuring that perishable goods are transported efficiently and in the right conditions. This is imperative for cold chain products, where time and temperature play critical roles in quality and efficiency.

Here’s how digital freight platforms help your cold chain beat the heat of the dog days of summer:

• Real-Time Visibility and Tracking: Visibility helps prevent disruptions by accelerating decision-making regarding delayed shipments that would otherwise lead to spoilage.
• Automated Carrier Matching: When booking cold chain transportation, you don’t have time to wait for someone to return your call or email. Automation uses algorithms and machine learning to match shippers and carriers automatically, minimizing a time-consuming manual process.
• Dynamic Rate Management: Application Programming Interfaces (API) allow digital freight platforms to offer real-time rate comparisons, allowing you to procure cold chain transportation at the best possible cost without compromising performance. Without real-time tracking, disruptions such as delayed shipments or inventory inaccuracies become common, potentially leading to significant operational and customer service costs.

When you operate within the food cold chain, you race against two formidable foes: Father Time and Mother Nature. Digital freight platforms prove to be a worthy ally for shippers and carriers, providing numerous benefits to help you achieve a seamless balance between cost, efficiency, and the stringent requirements of cold chain logistics.

Benefits of Digital Freight for Cold Chain Transportation

Digital freight solutions minimize administrative tasks and reduce errors, streamlining operations from quoting to booking and tracking.

Both sides of the freight marketplace — shippers and carriers — want the same thing: a load booked at the best possible rate. Access to real-time rates through digital freight platforms makes this a reality.

1. Book Immediately: When you operate in cold chain logistics, you don’t have time to wait. Infios' digital freight marketplace offers real-time connectivity that allows immediate booking decisions.
2. Automate: Labor challenges continue to hinder industries. By automating quoting, booking, and tracking processes, digital freight marketplaces allow labor to focus on more value-added tasks.
3. Enhance Decision-Making: Digital freight platforms offer valuable data analytics that can be leveraged to improve performance, route efficiency, and operational bottlenecks, leading to better decision-making and operational improvements. This provides a consolidated view of available capacity, which is crucial for managing high-demand periods in cold chain logistics.
4. Expand Business Opportunities for Carriers: Digital freight platforms help carriers access new markets and fill specific niches effectively, increasing their market reach and profitability.
5. Reduce Carbon Footprint: Empty backhauls or deadhead miles are bad for the environment and negatively impact carrier’s cost per mile. Worse yet, 2023 saw an increase in deadhead mileage of over 16%. By building backhauls and reducing CO2 emissions, digital freight partners contribute to sustainability efforts while increasing efficiency and reducing operational costs.

As industries in the cold chain undergo digital transformation, platforms such as digital freight marketplaces revolutionize and replace outdated operations. They streamline the process by eliminating the unproductive and labor-intensive tasks traditionally associated with booking freight.

Improve Cold Chain Transportation with Digital Freight

Transportation industry solutions don’t often benefit all the key players, but that’s just what digital freight platforms do. For sectors like cold chain, with seasonal spikes and volatile demand and capacity, Infios' digital freight marketplace is a welcome solution for carriers, shippers, and brokers to provide balance and remove worry.

At Infios, we solve freight volatility by connecting shippers and carriers.

Shippers can quickly access fully vetted carriers, and carriers can expand their business with a platform managing over $85 million in freight. The benefits don’t end there.

To learn more about Infios' Digital Freight Marketplace, download our eBook or schedule a demo to see how we are advancing transportation management.