Managing Extreme Temperature Swings Now Top of Mind for Shippers Mother Nature plays no favorites when it comes to freight, packing an equally brutal punch during the sizzling days of summer as she does during the frigid months of winter. When it comes to the importance of proactively managing temperature swings, shippers only need to think back to the winter of 2013-2014. Supply chain players who endured the Polar Vortex will tell you they had their own version of “Frozen” take center stage as they moved temperature-sensitive freight across North America. Unfortunately, their experience was nothing like a Disney movie, and happily ever after has been difficult to find as freight claims rose into the millions for some and took the better part of a year to settle. Shippers need to control and plan for what they can more than ever before as supply chain providers move away from offering temperature protection insurance.

Schneider brought together some of the largest manufacturers and distributors of temperature- sensitive freight in the food, beverage and liquid cleaning supply industries to share insights and learnings from the winter of 2013-2014, how they prepare ahead, and how practices apply to both hot and cold temperature extremes. This paper summarizes their experiences and the best practices they’ve now put in place to stay one step ahead of Mother Nature. A Frigid Look Back Once the deep freeze melted in 2014, shippers and carriers had an opportunity to step back and take a good, hard look at what Mother Nature left behind. The cold was so severe and so long — 22 days with sub-zero temperatures — that every leg of the supply chain, including railroads and trucking companies, felt her icy grip. Trucks didn’t start.

Drivers couldn’t report to work. The intermodal networks saw levels of congestion not seen before. Desperate to keep freight like beverages, cleaning supplies and wine and spirits from freezing, most shippers converted their freight from the train and put it over the road in dry vans or reefers, increasing their transportation spend by millions of dollars. The reason: Truckload capacity was tight and getting tighter and reefer capacity was even more hard to come by, especially for shippers who were infrequent users.

Shippers found that any mode shift added to their transportation cost. Others deployed different strategies to stay one step ahead of the wicked weather and freight claims. Use of alternate routings was common, with shippers and carriers holding steady on the mode of transit but finding new and different routes to avoid going deep into the Northern Tundra. Shippers found that being off the beaten path brings with it a host of challenges, including increased extra miles and spotty capacity. Some shippers adjusted shipment schedules, deciding to move freight from warmer versus colder points of origin to minimize the amount of time vulnerable products were exposed to severe temperatures. And some took the drastic step of shutting down production for several days to allow their supply chains to recover and get back in order. Other techniques sited by shippers with freight prone to freeze included use of blankets, hiring of third-party carriers to warm trailers loaded with product until the time of transit and developing an LTL network to quickly move freight to warmer temperatures for additional routing on to its final destination.

Some went the scientific route, becoming more precise with the temperature ranges within which they were comfortable shipping product, and some went high tech, deploying predictive software for visibility to an array of data points and information to enable better and more insightful decision making. As shippers prepare for future extreme weather, many questions remain: • What are the railroads and carriers doing to better prepare for extreme weather? • Are there any new products or processes they could use to ease the pain? • Will there be access to the capacity they need when they need it?

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• Can they count on the railroad schedule to be reliable this year? • How much swing in temperatures could their product endure until it was no longer safe or usable? • How long do the freezing and overheating processes actually take? Our time together provided answers to the most pressing. Railroads Getting Ready for the Next Round of Extremes Intermodal shippers and carriers who felt ill-prepared for what Mother Nature delivered in the winter of 2013-2014 were in recovery mode by late spring. Not to be outdone by the forces of nature a second time, the railroads made significant investments in equipment, people, infrastructure and process to prepare for extreme weather.

Additional locomotives (more than 1,000 across the CSX and BNSF lines alone) to facilitate more short-train moves if the weather requires; thousands of new conductors, engineers and others; and changing routing protocols to improve freight flows are all being addressed. Carrier Bulking Up, Too Carriers are also ramping up in preparation for extreme weather. Double-digit increases in boxes, summer and winter training for new drivers, additional plug-in capabilities for trucks at cold weather locations, and an increased level of support from outside sources to keep equipment running during the extreme highs and lows have all been put into place.

The severity of the season and the associated frozen freight claims were staggering for carriers, moving them to reevaluate their Temperature Protection Services. What was once an established and reasonable liability for carriers has become ineffective and punitive as shippers increasingly load their own freight. In this scenario, carriers have little to no say in how a box is loaded but are left holding the bag when freight is damaged. Some carriers will no longer provide Temperature Protection Services, appreciating the fact that shippers exercise the ultimate control in how their freight is loaded as well as the greatest opportunity to protect it from weather extremes. Auto Talker Free Emps Scape Wiki. Carriers are also focusing on what they do best in this space: Working on alternate routing of freight when the weather demands, managing blanket programs, and delivering expedited service when needed.