Reefer Claims Turn on Pulp Temp, Not the Setpoint

Setpoint, return air, and pulp temperature are three numbers

The setpoint is the number you, or the shipper, told the unit to hold. It is a target. Return air is the temperature of the air coming back to the unit from the trailer. It is evidence of what the air in the box was doing. Pulp temperature is the temperature inside the product, taken with a probe in the fruit, the meat, or whatever the shipper actually measures. Receivers who reject on temperature are often reading pulp, not your keypad.

Drivers defend the setpoint because the keypad is the number they can see while they drive. The claim is rarely about whether you can read a keypad. It is about whether the product met the temperature the bill required when it was offered for delivery. If those are different numbers, saying "I held 34" does not answer "the pulp was 42."

Write all three down when you have them. Setpoint from the unit. Return air from the display or the download. Pulp from the shipper's reading, in the shipper's hand if they will sign it. If you only have one, say which one you have. Do not label a return-air reading as a pulp reading.

A hot load the reefer did not cause

A refrigerated trailer is built to maintain temperature, not to chill a warm trailer of product down to a pulp spec during a transit that was never sold as a cooling service. Product loaded hot stays hot inside for a long time even when the air is correct. The receiver's probe finds that heat. The download shows a box that did its job and a claim that still arrives.

The defense starts at the shipper's dock, not at the receiver's. Ask for pulp temperatures. Write the numbers they give you on the bill of lading before you leave. If they refuse to pulp, write the refusal on the bill before you leave. A refusal noted at pickup is a fact. A refusal you remember after the rejection is a speech. If the pulp they do give you is already outside the spec on the bill, do not depart on a silent bill. Call the broker, note the temperatures, and get an instruction before you accept a load that is already out of range.

Do not add a lecture on respiration, ethylene, or which commodities cool slowly. The shipper's instruction and the numbers on the bill are enough. A commodity encyclopedia will not win the claim, and a wrong chart will hurt it.

Continuous versus cycle, if the rate con required one

Continuous means the unit runs to hold the setpoint. Cycle, or start-stop, means the unit starts and stops around a band. Some shippers require continuous because the product, or their procedure, does not tolerate the swings. If the rate confirmation or the bill says continuous, that word is the instruction. Running cycle because fuel was expensive is not a compliance argument. The download can show air temperatures that spent much of the trip near the setpoint and still show the unit cycling. Quote the paper. If the paper is silent, do not invent a continuous duty, and do not invent a right to cycle. Ask. Write the answer.

A claim that says you ran cycle against a continuous instruction is a contract fact. It can exist even when nobody is talking about a breakdown. Do not answer it by saying the product "looked fine" at delivery if the receiver is probing pulp and the rate con is sitting in the file with the word continuous on it.

Pre-cool before the doors open

Pre-cool means the air in the trailer is at the instructed setpoint before the shipper starts to load. It does not mean the unit was switched on at the gate. It does not mean a specific number of hours, because this page will not invent one. If the shipper's instructions say to pre-cool for a stated time, follow that time and note when you started. If they only say arrive pre-cooled to the setpoint, the test is the air temperature when the doors open for loading, not a story about when you remembered to start the unit.

Open the doors onto a hot dock and the pre-cool you built starts to die. Note long door-open times if the shipper leaves the trailer open. You cannot prohibit their dock from working, but you can write that the doors were open from one time to another. That note belongs on the bill with the pulp note. A pre-cool you cannot prove is the same, in a claim, as a pre-cool you did not do.

The download you keep

Keep the unit download for the trip. It shows setpoint, mode, and air temperatures over time. It does not show pulp unless someone typed pulp into a note, which is not the same as a probe. Download it before the unit's memory rolls off or before the next load overwrites the story you need. How long a particular unit stores data is a manual fact, not a number this page will invent. Download at delivery when a rejection is even possible, not three weeks later when the claim arrives and the memory has moved on.

Pair the download with the bill, the rate con, and the photos of the setpoint screen at pickup and at delivery. A download without the paper that required continuous, or without the pulp note, is a graph. The paper is what tells a reader what the graph was supposed to prove.

Breakdown versus a temperature claim with a running unit

If the unit failed, alarmed, and stopped refrigerating, you are on the breakdown page. That file is about the failure, the notice, and what you did while the unit was down. If the unit ran and the receiver still rejected on temperature, you are on this page. The stories get mixed when a driver calls a warm pulp reading a breakdown because the word sounds more innocent. Do not file a running-unit claim as a mechanical failure. Do not file a dead unit as "we held setpoint" because the keypad still displays the old target while the box warms up.

Say which story it is in the first sentence of the notice to the broker. Running unit, pulp reading, shipper's pulp at origin or the refusal, mode continuous or cycle as the paper required. Or: unit failed at this time, notice given, freight still at temperature or not. The right page is the one that matches that sentence.

Leave the commodity lecture out. The numbers and the instruction are the claim.

If the receiver pulp-probes one box and rejects the trailer, ask them to note how many cases they probed and where those cases sat. One probe can be a real claim and it can also be a warm case from the top of a stack that sat in an open door. Write what they actually did. Do not agree, on the POD, that the entire load was hot if you only saw one reading and you have a download that shows the air held setpoint.

Fuel and hours spent holding setpoint after a rejection belong in the refusal notes, not in a new temperature theory. Keep the unit in the instructed mode until a written instruction changes it.

Frequently Asked Questions