Truck continues to be the primary mode of transportation for temperature-controlled transportation and with today's capacity crunch this remains a challenge for shippers. According to a report by RWI Transportation, an asset-based logistics company providing temperature-controlled transportation for perishable commodities, the top three challenges include capacity, controlling and monitoring the temperature of products during shipping, and cost containment.

The 2012 Temperature-Controlled Transportation Report delves into the challenges and the strategies shippers use to overcome these challenges. The study is based on research from North American shippers of temperature-controlled products. Highlights include:

* Strategies to improving available capacity include finding new carriers as reported by 27 percent of respondents, better planning (22 percent), long-term contracts or commitments to carriers (13 percent) and using asset-based carriers/3PLs (6 percent).

* Shipment rejections due to inappropriate temperature variances are reported by 65 percent of respondents. Variances with too warm temperatures accounts for 42 percent and too cool 23 percent.

* A full 90 percent of respondents indicated that temperature tolerances impact their organizations with 38 indicating a significant to extreme impact.

"This report uncovers challenges specific to shippers of products requiring temperature-controlled environments that we are seeing today as we work closely with our customers," said Richard Bauer, executive vice president and general manager of RWI Transportation. "Current solutions to these challenges come from understanding and using the data available on shipments including lanes, location, temperature and more. As technology improves our access to better data increases and brings the industry closer to overcoming these challenges."

Source: RWI Transportation