Chilled SKUs had been treated as dry SKUs with a fridge parked at the end of the dock. A hired reefer held overflow. Retailer temperature claims sat in a quality folder. Logistics saw only a freight invoice. The plant could say the product left cold. It could not say the lane stayed in band.
The difficulty
Ambient warehousing had grown with the dry range. When chilled volume arrived, it was given a corner of the same shed, a portable unit, and a promise that drivers would keep the doors shut. Logger files, where they existed, lived with the carrier. Door-open time was not measured. Dwell at the plant and dwell at the retailer DC were not joined. When a claim arrived, the argument was whose probe was right. That is not a network. It is a dispute process.
The 3PL was competent at dry pallets. It was being asked to run a temperature band it had never been scoped to hold. Peak weeks filled the hired reefer and then the dry floor. Quality wrote non-conformances. Operations wrote that the truck had been cold at departure. Both could be true. Neither answered whether the lane was designed for 2 to 8 degrees C.
What we changed
We mapped SKU temperature bands, cube, order profile and dwell, plant to retailer DC. We wrote a demand pack for a genuine chilled operation: insulated capacity, logger data the manufacturer would hold, a named exception owner, and door discipline as a measured clock rather than a toolbox talk. Dry and chilled were priced as different work. The incumbent was invited. They were not assumed to win because they already had the dry contract.
Difficulty
Chilled volume in a dry shed. Logger files with the carrier. Claims sitting in quality, not in the lane.
Measure
Band map, dwell, demand pack for insulated capacity, data rights, exception owner.
Result
A chilled network that could be audited. Exceptions as a weekly file. The client signed the operator.
The result
Temperature exceptions became a weekly list with a lane, a dwell and an owner. Whether the plant kept the incumbent is confidential. What they held at handover was a description of chilled work that a second operator could price, logger rights in the draft SLA, and a split between dry and cold so one invoice could no longer hide the other. We did not operate the cold room. We did not take a fee from any bidder.
What the band actually required
A share of the damage was dwell at the plant, not the road. Product waited on an ambient dock because the reefer was still out on a Melbourne metro run. A share was a retailer booking that sat the trailer in the sun. A share was a SKU that should never have been in the chilled set. None of that is visible if you only ask for a colder truck. The demand pack therefore included plant dock rules and booking windows, not only a temperature number on a rate card.
Scoring weighted insulated capacity, geography of the retailer DCs, systems access to logger files, and the right to a volume extract the manufacturer would keep. Site knowledge the incumbent had earned was an advantage. Running chilled as a corner of a dry contract was a scored risk.
What operations could do after handover
The weekly exception file named the lane. Quality still owned product disposition. Logistics owned the clock that had produced the claim. Retailer fines, when they still occurred, had a cause that could be worked. The client kept the commercial decision. Names, sites and figures are withheld.