When it comes to maintaining food safety in the global storage and distribution of all kinds of products, it’s critical that warehouses and transporters protect the cold chain. An unbroken food distribution cold chain will keep food from spoiling, prevent the spread of foodborne pathogens, keep nutrients intact, and preserve the overall quality of the products. An important part of the cold chain is during the import, storage, and export process. Minnesota Freezer Warehouse Company (MFWC) operates two temperature-controlled warehouse storage facilities in south central Minnesota. Our location means we handle goods that are distributed to and from both coasts, and the north and south borders of the United States. To protect the cold chain as a comprehensive cold storage facility in the Upper Midwest, we utilize cross docking logistics for goods packed in a broad range of formats, including goods arriving on containers, rail cars, overweight trucks, and mixed freight trailers. We also utilize cross docking systems for shipments arriving late or early, loads from multiple vendors, time-sensitive shipments, and intermodal transport.
Process of Cross Docking
Cold chain logistics have several links that make up the full system. There’s the packaging process where goods start their journey after they have been fully processed and temperature-stabilized. Then there is the loading and transport link, the storage link, and the export link. Finally, the goods go through the unloading process at retail distributors, where they are put on sale for individual consumers or sold commercially to restaurants and others in the food service industry.
Cold Storage Facility
Cross docking essentially removes the storage link from the cold chain, eliminating it by immediately reloading and exporting the goods that were imported to the cold storage facility. Cross docking reorganizes goods into smaller or more diversified shipments for specific customers. Cross docking also consolidates shipments into different transportation systems; large shipments can be broken up for easier, smaller deliveries, while multiple shipments going to the same region can be loaded together.
Benefits of Cross Docking
The goal of cross docking is to reduce the number of shipping lanes used, consolidate products, and save time in distribution by making the supply chain more efficient and providing a solution for truck drivers running out of driving time.
When done effectively, cross docking has several benefits for MFWC as a warehouse storage provider and for our customers worldwide. Cross docking can reduce time to reach customer, eliminates storage costs along with warehousing capacity needed, and better supports the cold chain because raw materials and finished goods potentially get to their final destination with a reduction of compromise to products storage temperature and/or quality stability.
For more reliable storage, transport, and inventory tracking services, MFWC has the cross docking capabilities and facilities to get the job done. For more information about MFWC as a cold storage facility in the Upper Midwest, contact us at (507) 373-1477 or info@mfwc-cold.com.