Freezer warehouse productivity rises 30%

Narrow aisle lift trucks outfitted for the cold improve efficiency and reliability.

Modern Materials Handling - October 2, 2006

Before they appear on shelves or beds of ice in local specialty stores, exotic imported foods from Asia, Europe and South America appear at Newark Refrigerated Warehouse on the Port of Newark docks in New Jersey for pre-distribution storage.

Newark Refrigerated's operation relies heavily on its lift trucks to perform at peak efficiency in extremely cold temperatures and in narrow aisles.

The warehouse moves approximately 15,000 pallets a month of frozen foods from international container ships arriving at the docks and needs to keep that food as fresh as possible before shipping it to retailers.

Newark Refrigerated replaced its fleet with eight narrow-aisle double-reach trucks to perform day-to-day handling operations in the high-density warehouse.

The trucks were freezer-modified to include solid-state battery power, stainless steel hinges, and fluids and lubricants resistant to the cold. These changes dramatically improved vehicle reliability in the zero-degree Fahrenheit environment of the freezer warehouse while speeding the picking and putaway process.

The result of the change was a 30% increase in warehouse productivity accompanying a reduction in maintenance costs and time commitments.

"The key to our business is in keeping the product fresh, which means keeping products solidly frozen from the shipping container, across the docks and into our freezer warehouse," says Jerry von Dohlen, president of Newark Refrigerated Warehouse. "Our biggest challenge with our previous fleet was the trucks were always down for repair due to the demanding requirements of the loading and unloading of product for our counterbalanced equipment and the low temperatures for our reach trucks in the warehouse."

Now when a container carrying shrimp from Thailand is unloaded from a ship and opened, the frozen crates of product are guaranteed a quick trip into racks in the freezer warehouse and a rapid trip to their final destination.

"Each truck is far superior to the previous fleet in terms of productivity and efficiency in the freezer sections of the warehouse, keeping our product fresh and our customers satisfied," says von Dohlen.