The New Trend In Food Trade Organizations For Transportation Companies

You may have noticed that there is a trend in what leading food trade organizations are focusing on. It’s all about customer preferences and decisions that are spurred on by the health and safety of their food choices. This focus is also paired with the quality, freshness, and safety of pet food. SAFETY is the keyword in both of these focuses by food trade organizations.

If your company buys, makes, or does the transportation for food destined for human plates or pet bowls, you’ll want to keep safety in mind. How do you do that? By training and sometimes lots of it! Train the people responsible for food transportation practices to ensure their transportation practices mirror common food safety protocols practiced in the food and farming business. 

FDA Consequences & FSMA Standards 

Not a lot of people know, but food transportation also has regulations to follow in FSMA. You probably haven’t heard of these standards, but they are also codified, and the FDA can legally enforce them. However, the specifications in FSMA aren’t always clear, which makes the right decision about safe food transportation challenging. The result? Countless loads transported today are still riding in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, thanks to the vagueness of FSMA specifications. 

Trailer Sanitation & Current Trends 

While trailer sanitation is rarely publicly a topic of discussion, it’s privately discussed frequently and alongside health and safety for consumer food choices. In fact, it’s rare when it doesn’t come up in conversations with buyers and shippers.  

Training For Safe Food Transportation

  

So what is the ‘right thing’ for trucking companies to do when there aren’t clear standards but their supplier contracts specifically require a clean trailer to address the need for safety? Alternatively, how can you avoid trailer rejections at the shipping docks for an unsafe or unsanitary trailer? Train your drivers, dispatchers, operations managers, and customer service reps on best practices for safe and sanitary food transportation.

Topics For Training 

• Discuss pre-inspection routines and how to identify problem areas in the trailer.

• Review the types of cargo that shippers will reject if they see (or smell) it in a trailer.

• Explain how to best communicate with shipping employees when problems arise.

  
  

Support Your Team:

• Pre-approve trailer sanitation stations (washouts) based on service quality to ensure the safety of the food, convenience, and driver friendliness.

• Include these sanitation stations on dispatches or driver networks.

• Establish expectations for drivers to be attentive to the clear need for safe and sanitary trailers and monitor to ensure no further help is needed. 

  
  

The key is to make ‘doing the right thing easy,’ so getting rid of any restriction, confusion, or hassle is crucial to ensuring success. The goal is to stay on top of the leading trend in food transportation circles (especially between Buyers and Sellers) and ensure the safety of the food transported. Training and rewarding drivers who can help you prioritize a clean and sanitary trailer will be essential to moving forward.