Perishable food products go on an interesting refrigerated journey from farms and factories to grocery store shelves and other consumer areas. Helping to keep products cool while on the road is an interesting career that requires knowing the ins and outs of transportation and refrigeration.
Professionals with dispatcher training who work in refrigerated transportation need to keep a few points in mind. If you’re interested in this rewarding career path, read on to find out more about this field.
A Brief History of Refrigerated Cargo for Dispatcher Training Students
Prior to refrigerated transportation, food couldn’t be transported more than 80 kilometers from a farm without fearing it would rot. The first successful major refrigerated shipment attempt was made by a ship called Dunedin, which was fitted with a Bell-Coleman compression refrigeration machine. The machine was coal-powered, using three tons of coal every day to move heat out of the refrigeration chamber and keep it below freezing. Dunedin travelled from New Zealand to London in 98 days carrying a huge load of food, and ended up making around £4,700, which is around $200,000 CAD today.
By 1940, mechanical refrigerated trucking began with the establishment of the U.S. Thermo Company; the first refrigerated trucking company. Since then refrigerated trucking has modernized its practices substantially, with over 35 million containers of refrigerated goods being transported around the world annually.
Dispatch Training Students Can Help Keep Ice Cream Solid and Tasty
You can thank refrigerated trucking for that ice cream you had the other night. Dispatcher training students should know that ice cream melts if it’s just two degrees warmer than it should be. That’s why the first rule in refrigerated cargo is; always keep temperatures low during transit.
There are a lot of particular skills and pieces of information that dispatchers must know in order to ensure that perishable foods like ice cream arrive in a yummy state. One thing to consider is that refrigerator trucks are not always full, so dispatchers should remind drivers that the container must be adjusted depending on how much product it is carrying and keeping cool at any one time.
Dispatch Training Students: Beef Up Your Refrigerated Transportation Knowledge
Wagyu beef is some of the best in the world, and it often comes from in and around Japan. As is the case with many high-value perishable foods, Wagyu beef usually begins its journey being transported by air because it costs about $60 a pound. Once planes touch down, though, it’s up to the careful work of dispatchers and their fleets to ensure that this high-end product stays fresh. That’s where the in-depth knowledge learned in dispatcher courses plays a key role.
As noted in the Encyclopedia of Meat Sciences, refrigerator truck drivers must repeatedly open the door of the truck container to drop off the product. As many as 50 door openings can occur at any one drop off point, so dispatchers need to ensure that truck drivers repeatedly check the container temperature and get the product out and door closed as quickly as possible.
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