LTL Services

Reefer shipping refers to temperature-controlled trailers that transport freight, including fresh and frozen foods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and any product that is temperature sensitive. Colonial Cartage offers cost-effective, reefer LTL delivery solutions that keep temperature-sensitive cargo in the appropriate temperature range throughout the supply chain.

Unlike temperature-controlled (reefer) transportation, dry trailers or vans are not insulated or temperature controlled. Trailer lengths are the same as temperature-controlled trailers, but their cubic capacity is typically greater (for the same length trailer) since their interior capacity is not reduced by insulated walls and floors and refrigeration equipment.

Food-grade trailers are designed and maintained to maintain product integrity, quality, and safety. The FDA’s Sanitary Transportation rule governs food-grade transportation in the United States. This rule aims to prevent poor practices that create food safety risks during transportation that can lead to foodborne illnesses – such as improper refrigeration, contamination by non-food items, or cross-contamination. This rule applies to all shippers, receivers, loaders, and carriers transporting food in the United States.

Freight consolidation commingles multiple LTL shipments from various shippers into a single truckload to create one large shipment headed for the same location. The shipper of each LTL shipment benefits from lower costs from the proration of TL rates, faster transit times, and reduced risks of damaged products via multiple handlings.

The order-to-delivery cycle improves since there is no need for smaller shippers to wait for orders to fill a TL to that destination before shipping or for LTL carriers to trap freight to build a more efficient drop or shipment.

A breakbulk service is a distribution model where individual customer orders are picked directly from inbound freight received in bulk.

Essentially, the shipper picks the sum of multiple SKUs for multiple orders and asks the breakbulk provider to pick the individual orders from the consolidated shipment to the breakbulk facility. This service allows the shipper to bypass one aspect of the fulfillment process, making the inbound shipment to the breakbulk facility more cost-effective for the shipper by minimizing order selection at their facility.

Colonial Cartage offers consolidated order picking for bulk pool shipments.

Colonial Cartage’s transportation management team handles the appointing, load-planning, dispatching, routing, and delivery services for our warehousing and pool customers.

• The appointing process entails confirming with the receivers (retailers, wholesalers, or distributors) the suitable date(s) and time(s) for delivering our clients’ consolidated LTL shipments.
• For less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments, load-planning consolidates orders of different sizes from different shippers headed to the same destination into one trailer to maximize its payload capacity. Load planning helps improve operational efficiencies and lowers costs by spreading the stop fee or the cost of the truckload across multiple shippers for that stop or destination. That said, Colonial Cartage does not trap freight or wait for a full truckload to build more profitable loads for itself. Colonial ships per our weekly sailing schedule.
• Load sequencing ensures that cargo is loaded into the trailer in the reverse order of the drop sequence of the orders.

Colonial Cartage’s fleet is supported by a customized transportation management system (TMS) by Tailored Logistics Solutions. Our TMS delivers state-of-the-art routing, shipment visibility, and invoicing and has been integrated into Atlanta Bonded Warehouse’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) for integrated visibility of orders.

All Colonial trucks are tracked and logged with electronic logging devices (ELDs) by KeepTruckin (KT) and Brickhouse Security. We are also fully staffed to respond rapidly to customer EDI and data translation/interface requests.