Extreme Heat - Reefer Market

Only capacity that is lost is my patience if I’m forced to wait for someone in this heat.

Rain sleet snow, hell high water, or Death Valley heat. If someone’s paying someone is working.

 

. The only effect wind chill has on inanimate objects, such as car radiators and water pipes, is to more quickly cool the object to cool to the current air temperature. Object will NOT cool below the actual air temperature. That's what the scientists say anyway. I'm not trying to be contrary, but the way I read it is if the temperature is 32 non-living things never cool below 32 degrees. I thought the whole purpose of the wind chill factor was to show the effect of wind chill on living things? I've always kind of wondered about that myself.

 

Correct Windchill can be dangerous to living objects, nothing can get colder than ambient temp, dead or alive.Several times over the years, I have had drivers try and tell me their brakes were froze up when the temps have not yet reached the freezing point, some are hard to convince that just because it feels cold, does not mean it actually is. lol

 

The weather Extremes are irrelevant.

If it's -55 outside on the Freight liners dash board and a close agreement from reefer unit showing outside temp in that range while heating the freight to maintain 45 above for example.

That does happen from time to time when it requires temperature to be just so on anything loaded into a Reefer. It might be 130 in Dixie and you are trying to maintain -20 on Dough as a whole trailer load. I find it wonderful that the reefers we use are very nice compared to the ones we had long ago in the 80's for me with the mechanical controls.

I don't know anything short of a true ELE type national disaster where the call will go out to every 18 wheeler able to roll to start hauling god only knows what where. Reefers would already be planned in some cases under Tier two to haul dead bodies stacked in them to morgue processing should we suffer a very bad attack from a Nation State or a terrorist with a megaton class nuclear weapon. It's all there.

In any old day today, yesterday and tomorrow in all seasons of the year whatever the freight is bought, paid for and needs transport from A to B anywhere with a reefer, that's all is well.

You do however stop more frequently to nurse the running reefer to try and make sure there is no loss of control of temperature for the freight inside of it. If it would be lost and you knew early on you can get it fixed within hours and continue on.

 

There will be more water to move and maybe some chemicals requiring temp control on spot market....ohh, when watermelons ships and it is really hot brokers prefer reefers over vented vens.

 

There may be a few more loads offered when ambient temps are extreme, but not enough to matter.

The heat index may be irrelevant to product or trailer temp, but heat transfer is real. A loaded trailer being hauled down the road has a steady blast of engine heat coming off the truck, along with the warmer outside air passing over it. A trailer with marginal insulation, any air leaks (door seals, etc) and/or reefer unit will not keep temps as well moving down the road as it will when parked.

Yes some carriers with older equipment do refuse some loads knowing their equipment is not up to it. Ice cream is probably at the top of this list. It requires a -20ºF continuous setting, which consumes a lot of fuel on a good day. If the product warms to over -10ºF there is a risk of claim. So you can see how this might affect the decision process, versus a regular frozen load that runs at -10ºF and won't reach claim territory until it warms into the +20's.

The window of time between a reefer breakdown and repair before a claim happens is a lot shorter, so the risk is greater. Insurance will usually not pay out if the equipment is defective. A download from the unit and/or temp tattler in the load will tell if the unit was ever able to reach set temp, and be what determines a valid reefer breakdown claim or denied due to operator failure.

Many shippers will also require a trailer be pre-cooled to a certain degree, which may not be possible on some days if the equipment isn't on point. It takes 3-4X more effort to bring an empty trailer down to a sub-zero setting. Older trailers just don't have the efficiency to do it well, if at all.

All that said, what kind of load did I just accept today? Ice cream. I have late model trailers that can run -20ºF well enough. The favorable data points that got me to yes were:

1. 40,000 lb load. The more massive the load, the less the reefer unit struggles to keep a low temp on a hot day.
2. Load is moving from WI to north FL. Right behind a cold front. For 80% of the trip, ambient temps will be about 10-20º lower than they were just a couple days ago.
3. $$$$

 

I aint driving into no frickin nuclear blast zone to get loaded with bodies. Can you imagine trying to find parking?

Seriously tho, that what the national guard is for.