Our reefer drivers have told us it’s important for them to know the locations and dock details about all the cold storage warehouses in the US and North America.

The Federal government has very specific rules about the handling of food by the trucking industry. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) does not specify particular temperatures or handling practices. Instead, the Act says that the carriers must develop and implement their own procedures for complying with the standards set by the shipper. So in the end, it’s the shipper who will dictate the temperatures, sanitary conditions, cleaning, and handling of all foods.

The penalties for not following the rules are serious. If someone gets sick or dies from food that was mis-handled, they can be fined up to $500K.

One guy told us a story about a reefer driver making his way cross country when the refrigeration unit broke down. The driver figured he had about an hour to find a location to off-load the shipment before the trailer temp exceeded the safe handling limits. He called dispatch who, at 8pm on a Friday night, got a team of people looking for the next closest cold storage warehouse. Fortunately, they were able to find a location and save the load, but they were not happy about having to take four people off their regular jobs for a half hour each.

After hearing that story, we started focusing on getting data about cold storage warehouses into the Dock411 database. We’re going to add a feature to the app to point any driver to the nearest cold storage warehouse and repair facility.

We just added the first 350 cold storage warehouses to the app. That’s a modest percentage of the total number of warehouses across the US, so we have a ways to go to get a full list, but we’re underway and like the rest of Dock411, making progress.

If you have additional information about cold storage warehouses, let us know. We’ll provide you with a secure means to transfer the file to us.