Ashley Coker Prince
6 min read
Cold chain providers are accustomed to walking the line between maintaining product integrity while managing operational costs. Ongoing market tension, however, has made it more difficult to strike that balance.
For companies in food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and other temperature-sensitive industries, maintaining profitability in a difficult economic environment requires an enthusiastic commitment to innovation. While the cold chain industry continues to see new technological advancements, many fleets still operate under outdated assumptions about reefer management best practices.
Common challenges like confusion over operating modes and inefficiencies like unnecessary precooling durations can have significant cost and sustainability implications for transportation companies.
Reefer operators must choose between running their units in continuous mode or start-stop mode. While this is one of the most basic choices providers make, it is also one of the most consequential – and one of the most misunderstood.
Many operators choose to run their units in continuous mode in the name of product integrity. When fans are running all the time, carriers can ensure their cargo is kept cool without much additional effort. While this method may keep cargo safe, it can also be terribly inefficient.
“[Continuous mode] is often chosen out of either fear because you just don’t know which mode to put it on, or you’re trying to stay out of a liability or a lawsuit issue,” said Travis Ross, senior sales engineer at EROAD.
The industry’s tendency to choose continuous operation without scientific backing represents a significant opportunity for data-driven optimization. By examining actual temperature requirements versus operational habits, fleets can identify substantial efficiency improvements.
The financial implications of reefer operating modes are staggering when examined at scale.
According to Ross’ analysis, switching from continuous to start-stop mode can yield an approximate 40% reduction in both run time and fuel consumption.
Using conservative estimates of $3.55 per gallon fuel prices, 10 hours per day operation and maintenance costs of 60¢ per reefer operating hour, the numbers tell a compelling story.
“Your fuel savings per trailer, when you switch that operating mode from continuous to start-stop, is just over $5,000 a year, just from that one trailer,” Ross said. “So, if you take the fleet fuel savings for 500 trailers… It’s $2,565,000 for a fleet of 500. That’s just fuel.”
