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Arrive Fresh, targeted at reefer business, rolled out by Arrive Logistics

Arrive Logistics has rolled out Arrive Fresh, a service dedicated to a higher-end level of service for the refrigerated sector.

As the Austin, Texas-based company said in its announcement, it is “dedicated to solving the challenges of moving produce, meat, fish, dairy and other complex fresh freight.”

With an announcement like this, the question inevitably comes up: How is this different from the reefer business at other brokerages or at what Arrive Logistics was doing previously?

Executive Vice President Tony Hammonds, who will head Arrive Fresh, had some views on what will separate Arrive Fresh from other reefer-related brokerage businesses.


“The first thing we identified was that there was a lot of capacity out there that I would call a reefer carrier,” Hammond said. The term is not a compliment because he also said Arrive identified a next level of reefer trucks that he called “fresh carriers.”

“What we did was identify a process to really move those reefer carriers to becoming fresh carriers,” Hammond said.

Part of that involved setting up what Hammond called “partnerships … trying to get them more consistently on the fresh shipments so they understand the expectation of the wait time and what can go wrong.” The goal was to get these carriers in the Arrive network to recognize the difference between “one day you’re moving a frozen load of TV dinners and then the next day you’re trying to ship a fresh load of apples. It’s dramatically different how that’s going to be executed.”

As Arrive said in its announcement heralding the launch of Arrive Fresh, “every Arrive Fresh team member goes through a rigorous training program to learn the nuances of moving perishable products to provide customized carrier solutions.”


Hammond said Arrive Fresh has hired several executives with experience in the business of moving fresh foods. A decision to proceed with Arrive Fresh was made in March 2019.

Why not announce its launch then? Hammond said Arrive Fresh wanted to be sure it had spent adequate time “investing in the back-end processes and the people to make sure we could sufficiently execute the promises we make. We wanted to be sure we could deliver on that.”

One practice Arrive Fresh touted in its announcement: the use of drop trailers. In the prepared statement, Hammond said drop trailer service is generally “unheard of in the perishable food space.”

In fairly open criticism of what he sees as typical brokerage activity, Hammond said that “a lot of brokers just look at shipments.” The philosophy of Arrive Fresh is that there is a promise the shipper or customer makes to their own customers, “and we’re trying to help them execute on that.”

Hammond said in the transportation business, it’s difficult to concurrently serve two masters: service and price. The goal will be to deliver on both, he added.

At present, a lot of reefer drivers are hard pressed to service a more complex perishable load, or as Hammond described it, “a three-pickup, two-drop apple shipment and you don’t know if you’re shipping until the day before and it’s going to take 10 hours to offload.” Better training and preparation that Arrive Fresh is shooting for will “better prepare them … so they can meet the expectation of those shipments.”

9 Comments

  1. CM Evans

    I was cool w/this article until I read the last paragraph. Independent Owner Operators have been moving fresh loads from the beginning, at one time a group of Hands that would follow the season starting in S FL every year.
    The training needs to be on the brokerage side regarding ELD’s and HOS. Starting w/the formula of 50 mph between point A to point B. That old model does not work anymore w/the ELD, period. Accept this fact and fix it. Regarding HOS you don’t want to know how it works because you don’t want the liability associated w/it. Loads posted sooner/confirmed would allow the carrier to position assets and manage HOS appropriately instead of timing the market to get better margins.
    Just another non solution to real obstacles and a marketing ploy to attract new customers.

  2. Ken

    Hate to tell you this we have been doing three pickup two drops fresh produce in this industry for over a hundred years.Sounds like a bunch of here we go again with some word changes.I have been watching you guys since your boys came out off Florida State thought very highly off your operation but know you guys have really went nuts

  3. Mr.Ralph

    They won’t allow me to book loads with them because I work local in the Minneapolis area and I am only licensed for in state only and being I don’t go thru any scales to get worked over by the Dot officers they discredit my ability to book loads even though I have a great DOT rating spotless is what other brokers tell me. This should be illegal for them to do!

  4. Larry

    Lmfao this is way to funny!! This joker just explained exactly what a refeer carrier like myself and many others do already!! This joker isn’t gonna haul any differently than the next man and his under paid drivers are gonna wait for appointments and on docks like the rest of us!! No difference

  5. Noble1 suggests SMART truck drivers should UNITE & collectively cut out the middlemen from picking truck driver pockets ! UNITE , CONQUER , & PROSPER ! IMHO

    LOL this is too funny !

    IMHO !

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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.