1. Safety Trends

While basic technologies used in transport refrigeration systems are essentially unchanged over the past five years, according to Thermo King's Duppler, significant developments have occurred in the following areas:

• Improved emissions performance of systems and other solutions to address environmental regulations;
• Improved fuel efficiency;
• Enhanced user interface systems for improved performance and ease of use; and
• Expanded use of data collection and data management aimed at enhanced food safety and food product integrity.

"Food safety has been enhanced by the use of microprocessor control systems with increased capability for precise temperature control and data recording systems for documentation of food temperature throughout the distribution chain," he says. "Satellite and other wireless technologies are being employed to monitor food cargo and transmit temperature and operation data throughout the transit cycle."

The major focus now is tracking the temperature of the trailers, according to Lancer's Behrmann. The new units have a tracking device that enable operators to track temperature of the trailer by the hour, by the day, whatever time that unit was running. The most sophisticated trailers now have a GPS system on them that can track location at any time.

"The other trend has been what we call 'temp tails' where shippers now are putting temperature recorders inside boxes," he says. "A distributor like us can't even see them. When we deliver the product, the customer can open the boxes and they can find the temp tail in there. It will tell them what temperature this product's been held at for the last 24, 48 hours, whatever it's been.

"Years ago, if you had a unit go down and the product got warm, there was no way of ever finding it out," he went on to say. "Nowadays, almost everyone checks temperatures on receiving. They didn't before."

Behrmann tells the story of receiving loads of carcass beef years ago from Kansas or Nebraska. It was obvious that some of the cargo had gotten warm, but there was no proof since the units were running correctly. With temperature controllers, these instances of temperature fluctuation can be proven.

"The other thing is that the units today are more sophisticated and a lot more reliable," he says. "We hardly ever have a unit go down."

Carrier Transicold's Aguerrevere agrees, saying, "There's much more intelligence built into the system today in order to run the best conditions to ensure product safety while minimizing operating costs."

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