Got a question concerning refrigerated freight, for the past 10 years I have been running dry van and am now looking to go refrigerated. Its seems that most of the complaints come from drivers who say they have heard or been told, I am looking for some info from someone who has been there and done that. The biggest complaint I seem to get is that most of your deliveries or pickups will be between midnight and 4 a.m. Is this true for most of the loads or only a small percentage?? Now say you were an O/Op would you be able to have some control over your appointment times or not?? I have went thru every scenario, the grocery warehouses, possible LONG waits at appointments and can handle that, the occasional early/late apt I can deal with but having 60-70 percent of the appointments at that time may be more then I want to deal with at this time. Any info will be appreciated. Thanks everyone.

Dry van to reefer does have some differences.

One thing that may have to change, if you end up hauling much produce, is driving habits. I have watched many drivers pulling dry vans speeding through truck stops, taking curves fast, slamming on brakes because they were following too closely. Those things won't fly when you are hauling produce. You will find yourself opening up the trailer doors and your freight will be rolling out onto the ground as soon as you open the doors. You have to be careful hauling produce.

Also, when you pull a reefer, most produce loads, and many frozen food loads are "driver count", putting all the responsibility on you. This is particularly true with produce loads when you are picking up 6-7 different places.

There is more to a reefer than turning the switch on. They are much more trouble free than they used to be, but you have to pay close attention to the temperature, and know that it is defrosting properly. When picking up fresh food, you also will have to know the temperature of the freight going into the trailer. The reefer is there to maintain temperature, not to bring product to temperature. With a produce load, you have to be especially careful to make sure the shipper isn't loading you with product directly out of the field. If they are, and you have to take it, you may need to gradually cool it down to prevent freezing part of the load.

Other things you will deal with are overage/shortage/damage (OS&D). This happens with all types of freight, but it tends to happen more with food.

Grocery warehouse deliveries can often turn into long waits. I usually plan on spending anywhere from 2-4 hours at a delivery when I go to one of these. Same can be true when you are loading meat loads, as you are sometimes stuck waiting for the product to be ready to load. Sometimes these waits at the shipper can result in a pretty tough trip to the receiver due to being short on time.

Appointment times are around the clock, and the driver has little to no influence on it.

also one other point you will have a noisy engine right behind your bed that gets a little louder I belive when it is defrosting.

I learned when I was younger to sleep through the noise I just thought of it as a person humming really loud.

We have a few that are fairly loud, but nowhere near as loud as the old reefer units that I learned on. I remember the first "whisper" unit that I pulled, I woke up and actually got out of the truck a few times to make sure they are actually running.

The noise didn't take me long to get used to though.

Yeah S.O., you're right about that, it's amazing how quick you can get used to the reefer running, and just how quiet some of these new units are.
I found that keeping it set to continuous (as opposed to stop-start) helps get you used to sleeping with the unit running.
As S.O. already said, be prepared for waiting at customers with long load and unload times (esp some can take forever), and be ready to watch them load the product in case you have to 'SLDC', and have your pulp thermometer handy, because some places (T+A, salinas ca) will try and hot load you. In my case, T+A would bring the produce out of the field,into the quick chiller (think giant frigde super cooled with Liquid N) and the product would still be too warm.
Also, be ready to have fun with the lumpers. And no, just because you are an O/O doesn't really give you any say with regard to appt times, but you can (of course) refuse to take a shipment if it's going to a particularly crappy/annoying customer -Jewel,Dominics,Sysco,most WallyWorlds,that dump in Birmingham,AL (can't remember name), well, you get the idea.
Good luck, don't let this scare you away.

You must be referring to "piggly wiggly" in Birmingham. LOL..."dump" is too nice of a description.

10 to 12 hours loading at coolers, run like a bugger and 4am deliveies at produce markets/wholesalers, with no where near enough time between them. That is the norm and I'd say much more than your 60 % figure you stated.
Buy a good set of thermometers. make sure your trailer had good door seals or you wil rot fod at the rear or freeze it at the front trying to kep the rear cool. Refers are expensive, the noise is relly not an issue. I pull medical scanners with 4 and 6 cyl john deer driven generators screaming away at max rpm. WHen I pull into a truck stop the refer guys wake up ad move there trucks

Oh the days wasted in the field and at the coolers not to mention the meat houses. What was i ever thinking hooking to a motorized trailer. Man if you want allot of time to kill and then run like the devil and throw the log book away and get used to running 2 just to keep one legal half the time go ahead and hook to a reefer. You will spend 2 days at the meat house waiting on your load and they want it in Fl the next day because the longer they keep it in the cooler the more money they make off it because it was paid for before they killed the cows. so get use to middle of the night appointments and all night unloads and all night and all week loads. Yep they call it reefer madness for a reason you will be MAD insane by the time your threw.

"that dump in Birmingham, AL"............

Could that be Bruno's????

Been there, hated the place. Never goin again, I hope.

Been pullin Reefer 4.5 yrs out of 5 and I have no other complaints that haven't been mentioned already. I like it better than Dry Van, am use to the Reefer noise, delays have been few and far between but have happened a time or two, and hardly ever have to actually count the freight.

And I almost always sign the bills "SLC and S" which means Shipper Load and Count and Sealed". Only once did Shipper refuse that and had to print a new BOL but I signed it the same as the first one but Shipper didn't see that I did it again, LOL.

POS#2 P/Us and Del when I worked for Marten ( a refer outfit) most deliveries and P/Us were daytime 6am to 6pm. Very few were at night.

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Outta here