looking to start a reefer LTL company

I worked for a small refrigerated LTL company before I got my current "real LTL" job. It is a niche market for a reason. The headaches mentioned above are examples of why that's the case. I don't even know who our competitors were exactly, but I think FFE did a similar thing on a larger scale.

The biggest reason I think hardly anyone does it is that you really need refrigerated storage space and a cold dock to stage and load freight. Because of the nature of shipping/receiving hours and appointment times at food shippers and the grocery/foodservice warehouses that receive most of the product, it's pretty much impossible to go point to point. I suspect this would also be the case with a refrigerated expediter situation, which is what the OP was describing. Speaking of niche businesses, that one might be so specialized that there's hardly any demand for it, I don't know.

The way my company did it is that we had city drivers, regional drivers, and OTR drivers. Our city and regional drivers were in day cabs and home every night. Regional for us just meant covering the cities around Ohio and occasionally making pickups further out. That's what I did. From Columbus that could mean going as far as Louisville, Indianapolis, or Detroit, but we mainly ran Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, and Toledo areas (oh, and Amish country!). I described my position as being long-range P&D. Our OTR drivers did a similar thing but many spent all week getting their deliveries off and making pickups before coming home for the weekend. All of the pickups that came back required short-term storage until the freight could be combined into routes and sent back out.

I don't know if there's a market for expediting refrigerated shipments, but if there is I would want to do it in a small straight truck, rather than a sprinter van. Knowing all the places I went, I would think you would want dock-height access. Just a thought...

 

As stated the sprinter van expedite type equipment won’t work...refrigerated ltl on east coast(or anywhere for that matter) is highly competitive and very lucrative BUT next to impossible for a small start up...
Customer base is too spread out for one....8-10 picks across say a 300mile area....same with drops...I’ve done refrigerated ltl over 40 years...right customer base very lucrative but requires lots of folks lots of coordination
Think a regional dry ltl carrier...look at what it takes to deliver service required....
Now multi spot completely different ballgame
If you have a shipper or 3 that load at one facility (or couple if they’re close by) that has multiple customers in a regional area...Then you can make one pick and roll and start makin drops...revenue isn’t as good but people do make a good living at it
Just a thought

 

I did “dry can” LTL delivery years ago.
Driving a Freight Shaker.
Your big ole canister vac trailer, vacuums up multiple loads from a terminal rail car.
Then blows them out into different customers tanks or underground tanks.
As they’d say, you’d spend the whole day just sucking and blowing.
Delivering powdered chemicals, powdered lead, grit etc to companies around Cleveland and North East, Ohio.
Pay was lousy.
Needless to say I didn’t stay long…

 

Wi

This is exactly what Witte Brothers out of Troy MO do. And thus, exactly why they have a hard time keeping drivers. They’ll pick up all ones and twos pallet freight, make a load out of it at their warehouse, then send a driver out multiple AWG warehouses and cold storage facilities working down to Dallas. Then start picking up on the way back. Used to they did the same with Meijer in like Tipp City and Lansing and all that. That type of trucking would not interest me. It’s bad enough dealing with one grocery warehouse a day, but multiple would drive me up the wall.