Hi we are a growing food manufacturer out of NC. 1/4 of our business is not networked nationally to provide their own pick up so we have outsourced frozen reefer runs to Raleigh, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Miami, Geneva AL. All loads are LTL ranging from 1 to 14 pallets 600lb up to 11000lbs anywhere between 4 and 8 loads in a month. What I have found price wise is no one can compete with the big boys price wise and lead time due to the amount of distribution centers so we have been using the largest Reefer outfit in the southeast for quite some time. Yesterday, the unspeakable occured. 39K worth of product in deep freeze in our warehouse arrived with liquid condensation and the customer accepted it before they notified us. We got screwed of course, the outfit sent us fake temp readings and refused to allow me to access the data from the satelite monitoring provider directly and the customer accepted it. In all cases, our volume is rising at such a rate and we expect by December to have weekly runs to Miami.
We are looking at a couple of options
1) upgrading our 24' to a full size truck and contracting drivers that will work it into their schedule. Which is a bit dicey because we have volume projection that may pay for that cost but there is too much variable.
2) finding a partner driver in nc that has a truck that has control or play in their schedule to make those runs work and wait to see where the volume is going.
Thankfully the product did not completely dethaw but we are still on needles how much of it will come back because presentation issues of the product going thru freeze, thaw, freeze etc. and it isn't just the product itself that incurred damage, these are million dollar accounts that are fickle could easily get their goods else where next season. We also have issues of two three week lead times to work our smaller LTL shipments in with the large carriers. A growing company can no longer risk product arriving in a timely manner in the state it left our facility. We can no longer rely externally on a company willing to shut off their truck for 4 hours in the middle of the night to save a few bucks meanwhile our risk is a million dollar account.
Anyone have any ideas or ethical local NC contacts that our needs may fit their business model? Thanks
How do I find a private owner/operator Reefer that runs southeast, northeast a
Discussion in 'Ask An Owner Operator' started by cakequeen, Jul 4, 2014.
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