Reefer Temp Issues on a brand new Great Dane

It was a fun Monday...was hoping to get people's opinion that are smarter than me on this.

So we were loaded with a -10 load Thursday afternoon and didn't deliver until this morning so the product was on our trailer for 3.5 days. Well after delivery I got notification from the customer that temp was a little high so I had to send my reefer download. Data looked perfect and it maintained a temp of -6.6 degrees over the 3.5 days with no alarms or shut offs (besides fueling for 5 minutes). The receiver takes the temp of a pallet on the nose, middle and tail and the nose was 22 degrees, middle 20 and tail 18, so a very material variance from what my data was telling me. We were unloaded in 45 minutes so the product was not sitting on the dock long.

Anyone have any thoughts? The reefer did go into defrost mode while getting unloaded but there's no way it could cause the temp to increase that much in a short time frame. We aren't allowed on the docks so we can't check the product temp but this is a common lane and have never had an issue before. Unit is 9 months old with less than 2,000 hours on it. I'm really stumped and any wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank you for the wisdom! I've been scratching my head trying to figure this out. The receiver is in a cave and we never had this issue before so I'm leaning toward the receiver missed something when they took the temp of the 3 pallets. It's not a comforting feeling.

 

It’s TK S700 unit with 2,000 hours with a GD reefer with the insulation package. I just have the normal spec amount of sensors in the trailer.

This morning we delivered 4 pallets of chicken and was set at 20 degrees and product was at 34 when unloaded. My data again was perfect but believe the product was hot going in the box plus it was on our trailer for only 21 hours and we were in +100 degree weather all day. We aren’t allowed on the dock so there’s no way to know what the product temp was going on. Same thing happened when we got loaded on Thursday, they close the doors from the inside and seal it so we have no idea.

I was thinking about the load from Thursday and the reefer ran hard from loading until empty. From Friday afternoon to Monday AM it burned 85% of the fuel (43 gallons). It was hot all weekend but it has never burned so much fuel and makes me wondering if it was fighting hot product to bring it down. Even if the product was loaded at +10 degrees it never had a chance to get to get -10 and was just going to maintain that +10.

I called a TK dealer for peace of mind and he said from everything I gave him we don’t have an issue. There’s no codes and data looks good there’s nothing to be concerned about. But still there’s doubt that creeps into your mind.

 

Good idea. We will have to do that. All of this is just a head scratcher.