Introduction:
The admirable industries of product logistics and transport are literally the backbone of our cities and states. What truly allows developed and undeveloped countries around the world to grow, improve population health, life-expectancy, and continue to evolve are the scientific technologies we invest in to improve the precarious transportability risks of temperature- sensitive products that our world needs.
We cannot just consider the climate in the county or state where your temperature-sensitive product is picked up for delivery, nor is it just the weather or climate conditions in the part of the country where shipments are being delivered; it is the totality of various microclimates along the shipping routes, through which our services transport your precious cargo to their ultimate destinations.
IMPACT:
As a premier, world-class shipping company, we take full responsibility, using precise measures to securely monitor every load we ship. Whether a full-load or partial, for consistent temperature, security seal handling, and protection of your valuable cargo for the duration of the transport.
There is not an option for compromising the integrity of temperature sensitive product loads. Scientifically assigned temperature ranges have been designated for specific products. As a conscientious and responsible force in the logistics and transport industry, we make a core provision in our daily operations, to make sure we know and understand the critical elements of the products in our care.
Having insurance is a typical financial benefit for protecting our customer’s precious cargo investment, but we cannot consider it the ultimate solution to be used in today’s complex shipping practices. The implementation of ever-improving best practices for pro-active risk-reduction technologies that support our transport and delivery services of your valuable products involve high-tech, consistently reliable checks and balances.
We strategically ensure that every possible variable that could risk an impact to your product quality is continuously monitored, recorded, and documented to eliminate any chance of a security breach, temperature change damage, or unauthorized tampering.
Innovations and Progress Requires Higher Accountability
In the early days of shipping and freight management, our customers were delighted if they received their products on-time, unbroken, and in the correct quantities. With the innovative scientific development of temperature sensitive medicines, vaccines, blood products, foods, and chemicals, there have been a vast change in refrigeration and freeze control methods.
When it was once a tricky situation to get produce like lettuce, tomatoes, peaches, and meats, from one part of the country to another, or even into distant parts of the world, we took great pride in our temperature control systems that allowed fruits to remain fresh, lettuce to arrive crisp, and meats delivered bacteria-free. As things sometimes went wrong, and equipment failed, the inconvenience, disappointment, and customer dissatisfaction was a disturbing problem. Then the only solution was to use our product damage insurance to help our customers. Still, the problem was usually an incredible annoyance, but not life threatening.
The freight and product transport industry has changed exponentially. There are new dimensions of regulatory requirements, and higher customer expectations and demands. New logistical possibilities create a science of technological solutions that enable the reliable transport of temperature-sensitive products that are dependent upon critical delivery climates, humidity ranges, and other intensive stabilizing environments.
These technologies specifically allow long-distance deliveries of critically needed life-saving, products that mean the difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands, even millions of people. We have come a long distance from adding extra blankets to our shipment cartons before we hauled our 18-wheelers up a frozen mountainside.
Pharmaceuticals:
In accordance with a recent World Health Organization study performed for UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, there are countless temperature-sensitive, life-saving medicines and vaccines available that can treat and prevent unnecessarily life threatening diseases. Early attempts to deliver these medical products to distant parts of the country or remote areas of the globe were unsuccessful.
The various modes of transportation needed to get medicines, blood products, and vaccines into remote or long distance areas were not able to keep products within the temperature range needed to stabilize them, and keep them stabilized and potent, to be useful in treatment.
Often, even when the medical staff could afford refrigerated trucks or vehicles that prevented the medical products from freezing, transferring products from vehicles to boats, hiking up mountains with back packs, or even unloading planes onto tarmacs in hostile countries where medicines had to sit in direct sunlight, or freezing temperatures would compromise the quality and potency of the product.
No wonder the native populations of these remote areas often believed our medicines were useless. When they reached their destination, these vaccines or medicines were no longer effective, due to over heating or freezing beyond their safe temperature ranges.
UNICEF reviewed one example of an avoidable and treatable parasitically transmittable disease that causes 200 million cases of malaria in the world every year. Untreated cases or cases treated with expired or temperature altered vaccine results in an estimated 440 thousand deaths annually. The solution for this serious problem is two-fold.
- Create additives to stabilize the vaccine so it is not ruined from temperature variations.
- Find technological methods to improve conditions during transport to protect the temperature-sensitive medicines and vaccines like those needed to treat diseases like malaria, wherever on the globe that treatment is needed.
UNICEF serves over 190 countries and territories around the world and they have found over the last 70 years of service that there is irreversible loss when heat or freezing damages their valuable freight.
Biological Blood Products
In the United States, our communities can face the same irreversible consequences during severe weather conditions, dangerous major storms, floods, power outages from heat waves or the disruption of power grids. Blood products, Plasma derivatives, and other biological blood products that are temperature-sensitive can be temporarily preserved under certain conditions.
IMPACT:
If the emergency back-up power has been lost, and your medicines have been frozen, health clinics, laboratories, and physicians’ offices can store their thawing lyophilized coagulation products at room temperature for a short time. New technology packaging for temperature-sensitive biologics have color- sensors that alert a medical professional before the products are compromised.
If a biological product is in danger of losing its potency at room temperature, it can be stored in wet ice. There is a negative impact to biological products during transport for the same reasons under the same conditions. Responsible freight industry companies employ every possible technology needed to maintain necessary environmental conditions to protect their cargo.
Transport Monitoring Technology
Our fleets use imbedded temperature fail-safes like reefers equipped with high-tech trackers with temperature alerts that allow the whole Road Scholar Transport team to manage temperature changes and potential emergencies before there can be any loss of product integrity. Within our freeze protect policies, we have provided for flawless five-day services for 100 percent coverage, as well as expedited service to get your special shipments where they need to be safely and quickly.
Our staff, at every level, understands their roles in ensuring our cold chain¹, temperature-controlled supply chain service exceeds customer satisfaction under every controllable situation. It is our priority to stay ahead of quality control standards and compliance with every regulatory agency as we provide top-quality, GMP, and an unbroken cold chain service for your temperature-sensitive product lines.
Road Scholar Transport Freight services the dangerous variables that exist when biologicals, medicines, liquid hazmat chemicals, and controlled substances require special attention to arrive at their destinations on schedule, in pristine condition. We have outfitted our fleet with state-of-the-art security, real-time monitoring of seals and data recording of door usage, tracking routes and off-route conditions.
Citations:
- Matthias DM, Robertson J, Garrison MM, et al. Freezing temperatures in the vaccine cold chain: a systematic literature review. 2007;25(20):3980–3986.
- http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ComplianceActivities/default.htm
- https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/diagnosis_treatment/treatment
- http://sites.path.org/vpfst/product-stability/freeze-protection/
- http://showme.roadscholar.com/Mquicksearch.asp
- http://www.roadscholar.com/protect-your-freight-from-freezing-this-winter/
- http://sites.path.org/vpfst/product-stability/freeze-protection/
- http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/default.htm
- http://sites.path.org/vpfst/product-stability/freeze-protection/
- roadscholar.com
