Keeping products cold along a logistics supply chain is critical. Most manufacturers and consumers don’t consider the steps controlled-temperature trucking companies take to ensure the integrity of their products. Handling logistics in-house presents a number of risks and challenges. Read on to learn why your business needs a third-party logistics company that specializes in refrigerated trucking.
What Are the Challenges of Handing Refrigerated Trucking In-House?
There are a number of challenges to keeping products cold along the supply chain. When you handle your refrigerated trucking in-house, you will bump up against the following challenges.
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Diminished Ability to Focus on Your Core Competencies
Keeping your products cold along the supply chain and getting them into the hands of your consumers at peak quality is labor intensive. Temperature-controlled transportation requires significant planning, management, organization, manpower, transportation, and storage.
When you manage your own logistics needs, it siphons off your bandwidth away from other core areas of your business. The quality won’t be as good as a 3PL cold warehouse if it’s not your area of expertise.
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Decreased Profitability
When you handle your own refrigerated trucking, you must buy, lease, or build cold storage facilities that adhere to strict FDA standards and guidelines. This requires significant venture capital upfront. And once you have all of the necessary components, you then have to optimize the supply chain’s efficiency. An inefficient supply chain will reduce your profitability and create more headaches.
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Increased Liability
There are more risks involved with your own cold supply chain management. You have to adhere to strict guidelines and standards and hire, train, and retain qualified team members. Additionally, you must have insurance policies in place to protect your organization when mistakes, errors, or mishaps occur. This puts your company at risk should any problems arise to accept liability.
Benefits of Using a Third-Party Refrigerated Warehouse Logistics Company
With the challenges of in-house cold storage in mind, outsourcing cold chain logistics holds several benefits. Whether you’re a small business or have a large customer base, you can profit from cold storage services from a 3PL partner. We’ll go over just a few of the benefits you can expect from refrigerated warehousing.
Cost-Efficiency
In industries like the food industry, one of the biggest threats to profitability is wasted food—when food is left at room temperature for too long, it begins to rot.
Additionally, old, outdated refrigeration equipment can wreak havoc on a business’s energy bills. Another factor to consider is that older equipment may not be keeping food at the optimal temperature for maximized food safety and shelf life.
Lastly, having enough cold space can be a constant challenge for businesses that rely on refrigeration, especially as they grow. Third-party refrigerated warehouse companies like CWI Logistics solve the issue of needing adequate refrigeration.
Scalability
In addition to solving the issues related to cost-efficiency, refrigerated warehouse companies help with a business’ space constraints.
As businesses grow, their demand for refrigerated storage space increases. In other cases, businesses go through busy or slow periods where they need more flexibility in their storage space.
Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for businesses to invest in a large space that won’t be fully utilized. Third-party logistics companies like CWI solve this problem by scaling with you and your needs.
Lower Deterioration Rate
The deterioration rate measures an asset’s degradation over time. The deterioration rate is a significant factor for any type of perishable product like food, cosmetics, or flowers. Therefore, sufficient refrigeration space is key. Lowering your product’s deterioration rate is another way third-party companies can increase your bottom line.
More Robust Supply Chain
One of the biggest challenges felt since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a strained supply chain and the inability to keep up with cold storage demand. The demand for grocery deliveries is now higher than ever. Every step in the food supply chain is crucial and the fewer gaps in the chain, the better—especially when it comes to temperature-sensitive products. With a high demand for more cold storage facilities across the US, the rise of regional warehouses helps fill this need.
Greater Staging Ability
One of the reasons consumers love the e-commerce behemoth Amazon is because they’re able to purchase a wide range of products and have them delivered to their doorstep within just 1–2 days. Amazon is able to offer such rapid turnaround times because of its hefty investment in regional distribution facilities. These regional centers allow Amazon to decentralize its storage and distribution by staging a wide range of products across the US in anticipation of future purchases from its customers.
Smaller businesses can’t afford to invest in this type of network. However, working with third-party logistics providers (3PLs) that have regional refrigerated storage facilities gives them this ability without all of the upfront costs.
Expanded Market Area
Last but not least, regional refrigerated storage facilities via 3PLs empower small businesses to expand their reach far beyond their geographic location. Therefore, instead of serving a small local area of customers like a few cities or counties, small businesses with temperature-sensitive products can serve customers hundreds or thousands of miles away. Again, with a reasonable cost of entry and the ability to scale up or down based on demand and current market conditions.
CWI Logistics Is Unique from Other Refrigerated Trucking Companies
Keeping your products cold in Florida and the Southeastern United States is crucial. CWI has cold storage facilities spread all across Central Florida and works with a multitude of carriers and partners across the US.
As a premier 3PL provider, we offer you more robust cold chain management than handling your own. We will save your business time, money, and costly frustrations. Entrust your product storage and distribution to us so you can focus on other important aspects of your business.
Reach out to us today for all of your 3PL service needs!