Cold Chain Logistics
Your fleet runs 18 hours a day.Your data doesn't.
Every reefer mile costs more than a dry van mile. But the real losses aren't in the rate per mile. They're in the trailer that ran empty because nobody matched it to a backhaul, the excursion event that killed a $40K load of seafood at 2 AM, the warehouse compressors cycling during peak demand because defrost schedules haven't been touched since 2019. We embed with your team, map every facility, route, and handoff, and deploy AI specialists that close the gaps. Not a dashboard. Real operational change, from week one.
The Problem
Where the money
is going.
Risk
Temperature Excursions & Compliance
A two-hour deviation can destroy a $40K shipment. But the real cost isn't just the product. It's the FSMA documentation scramble, the carrier claim, the emergency re-order on expedited freight, and the customer penalty for a short delivery. Most excursions don't happen in transit. They happen at the handoff. Dock doors left open during staging, pre-cool cycles cut short to meet dispatch, drivers who don't know the reefer unit alarmed because the alert went to a phone that was on silent.
Cost
Fleet Utilization & Empty Miles
Reefer trailers cost 40-60% more per mile to operate than dry vans. Yet industry-wide, roughly one in five reefer miles is deadhead. The backhaul problem is worse for temperature-controlled freight because you can't just grab any load. It has to match your trailer's temp zone, your driver's HOS clock, and your next pickup window. The result is trucks burning 1-2 gallons of diesel per hour on the reefer unit alone while running empty back to the yard.
Cost
Warehouse Energy & Refrigeration
Cold storage facilities use four to five times more energy per square foot than standard warehouses. Refrigeration alone accounts for 70-80% of that energy bill. But the waste isn't just in the electricity. It's in compressor cycling that spikes demand charges, defrost schedules running on fixed timers instead of actual frost accumulation, and dock doors opening during peak load periods because inbound arrivals aren't coordinated with warehouse capacity.
Process
Driver Scheduling & Load Coordination
Reefer drivers need specialized training. They're managing pre-cool procedures, monitoring setpoints, handling multi-stop deliveries where every door opening is a temperature event. HOS regulations don't care that your frozen load needs to reach three different customers before the clock runs out. And when a driver's available hours don't align with the delivery windows, the load either sits or you scramble for a relay. Dispatch is solving a puzzle every morning that gets harder with every new customer.
How We Work
Three steps. Hands on.
We embed with your team, map your operation, find what no one could see, and deploy specialists that fix it. You get a dedicated team, not a login.
Map
We start with a structured discovery. Our team interviews every dispatcher, warehouse supervisor, fleet manager, and driver lead across your operation. We connect to your TMS, WMS, telematics, and temperature monitoring systems. The result is your Blueprint: a complete, live map of how your cold chain actually runs, from inbound receiving through cold storage to last-mile delivery.
Uncover
We analyze everything we mapped. Our platform finds the routes burning empty reefer miles, the dock schedules creating temperature exposure, the energy patterns driving demand charges, the dispatch bottlenecks costing driver hours. We validate every finding with your team before acting on it. Not a one-time audit. Always running, always finding more.
Execute
Every finding comes with a concrete plan and a deploy button. We build AI specialists that handle the fix end to end. Optimize route sequencing to reduce deadhead, coordinate dock scheduling with compressor loads, tighten dispatch planning around HOS and delivery windows. You approve, they run. We stay with you to make sure they deliver.
Example Findings
What Yield typically finds.
Based on a typical mid-market company with $20M–$50M in annual revenue.
Cost
Empty Reefer Miles on Unmatched Backhaul Lanes
$347K/yr
Cost
Demand Charge Spikes from Uncoordinated Defrost Cycles
$128K/yr
Risk
Spoilage Claims from Dock-Door Handoff Excursions
$91K/yr
Process
Dispatch Rework on Multi-Temp Load Consolidation
21 hrs/wk
Knowledge
Undocumented Pre-Cool and Setpoint Procedures
28 processes
In Practice
See it work.
From day one.
Week 1
Discovery
We talk to your entire operation.
AI-led conversations with every dispatcher, warehouse lead, fleet manager, and driver supervisor. Not surveys. Real conversations that capture the workarounds, the pre-cool shortcuts, the dock scheduling tricks, and the temperature response procedures no system records.
Month 1
Blueprint + First Savings
Your Blueprint is live. Agents are saving money.
A complete, verified map of how your cold chain operates, from inbound receiving through cold storage to final delivery. The first route and energy optimizations are identified, and AI specialists are already in production reducing empty miles and demand charges.
Ongoing
Continuous Returns
Savings compound. Every quarter.
Yield keeps finding inefficiencies, deploying specialists, and compounding savings. Routes adapt as customer delivery windows shift. Energy optimization sharpens with every season. Excursion prevention improves as the system learns your handoff patterns. The platform pays for itself and keeps going.
FAQ
Common questions.
Our FSMA compliance audits already eat two weeks a quarter, so what does Yield actually change about our temperature documentation workflow?
Most cold chain operators treat FSMA documentation as a manual scramble after excursions happen. Yield maps where your documentation gaps actually are: the dock-door handoffs where temperature logs break, the pre-cool cycles that get cut short and never recorded, the reefer alarm events that go to a phone on silent at 2 AM. It deploys specialists that close those gaps in real time, so when an auditor shows up, the documentation already exists. One operator cut their quarterly audit prep from 11 days to 2.
We see massive volume swings between summer seafood season and winter produce runs, so how does Yield handle seasonal demand shifts in perishable freight?
Yield tracks your lane-level volume patterns across seasons and maps them against carrier availability, reefer trailer positioning, and warehouse capacity. When your seafood lanes ramp in May, it surfaces the backhaul imbalances and energy load changes before they hit. When winter produce shifts your temperature zones, it flags the setpoint and defrost schedule adjustments your facilities need. The specialists adapt continuously rather than waiting for your ops team to notice the season changed three weeks ago.
Our warehouse teams still run defrost on fixed timers from the original compressor install, and we suspect it's costing us on demand charges. Can Yield quantify that?
Fixed-timer defrost is one of the most common cold storage energy problems we find. The timers cycle every six or eight hours regardless of actual frost buildup, and they often run during peak utility rate windows. Yield maps your compressor cycling data against your rate schedule and actual frost conditions. In one network of three facilities, we found $128K in annual demand charge waste because two buildings ran defrost during the utility's peak window every single day. The specialist that fixed it adjusted scheduling within the first month.
We run multi-temp trailers consolidating frozen and refrigerated freight on the same route, and it creates constant dispatch headaches. What can Yield do about load consolidation complexity?
Multi-temp consolidation fails when dispatch builds loads based on delivery windows alone and ignores zone compatibility, door-open dwell time at each stop, and the temperature recovery curve of the trailer unit. Yield maps your actual consolidation patterns, identifies which stop sequences cause zone breaches, and deploys a specialist that flags incompatible load combinations before the trailer leaves the yard. It also surfaces which lanes produce enough single-zone volume to justify splitting the trailer entirely, which often reduces both spoilage risk and dispatch time.
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See what Yield finds in
your cold chain.
30 days. Real results. Or walk away.