If you think delivering the perfect Thanksgiving turkey from brine bucket to dinner plate takes precision, you should hear Chris Bland explain the feat required to ensure almost 50 million birds stay cold enough on their journey to stores every November.

The co-CEO of Indianapolis-based First Call Logistics spends the weeks before the holiday glued to monitors flashing data on the availability of refrigerated vans and trucks – called “reefers.” A particularly good measure is the tender rejection rate – the share of bids that trucking companies turn away when capacity runs short.

A rate of zero to 5% is normal, and 6% to 10% shows a strained market. Earlier this week in Indiana, the nation’s fourth-largest turkey producing state, rejections hit 12.8%.

“That tells me if a shipment is not pre-planned and there’s late notice on it, it’s definitely going to be more difficult to cover,” Bland said.

As Americans head into their first holiday season in three years with supply chains operating normally, the nation’s annual turkey feast shows how the logistics links between producers and consumers can cope with a large demand shock – albeit a controlled and highly predictable one compared with Covid’s surprises.

“Whether we’re hauling produce or turkeys or whatever it might be, as soon as it’s harvested or manufactured and it’s on that truck, it’s got a ticking clock,” Bland said.

Battered for years by driver shortages, the US trucking industry has struggled through much of 2023 with excess capacity and softer demand. That has put financial pressure on carriers as companies shipping products seek lower rates in the spot market for freight services, shifting away from contracted rates.

The country’s freight downturn has taken out old and new players. Convoy Inc., a Seattle-based trucking startup, shut down last month. Nashville’s Yellow Corp., the No. 3 less-than-truckload carrier, filed for bankruptcy in August.

Lee Klaskow, senior logistics analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a research note this week that he doesn’t see contracted truckload rates going much lower “as the spot market appears to have bottomed and trucking conditions are poised to turn heading into 2024.”

Cold-Chain Consolidation

Reefer capacity – used mostly to move perishable food and pharmaceuticals through a network of vehicles and storage facilities dubbed the “cold chain” — can be more volatile than non-refrigerated cargo space because it’s more expensive to invest in and costlier to maintain. It’s also a higher-margin business where demand is steadier than transportation of more discretionary consumer items.

Lately, too, there’s been a lot of consolidation taking place.

“In markets like North America and Europe, quite a lot of acquisitions have been finalized with, for example, private equity companies jumping on the markets and acquiring cold storage companies,” according to a blog post this month by A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s No. 2 container carrier.

This time of year, transporting turkeys squeezes reefer capacity so much because seasonal food needs to stay cold to maintain food safety. Spoilage is the ultimate failure of the system, so the newest trucks are equipped with sensors that relay to dispatchers information ranging from temperature fluctuations to whether a driver made too sharp a turn.

According to figures compiled by First Call Logistics, 46 million turkeys will be needed to satisfy Americans’ appetite this month. That equates to about 29,000 truckloads, a procession of poultry that would stretch from Boston to Baltimore if lined up bumper to bumper.

But for Bland, Thanksgiving isn’t always the most volatile season to help customers’ frozen food move safely. The Fourth of July soaks up a lot of refrigerated trucking space, as does the three-day event each year – known as DOT week - when road safety inspections take place.

“A lot of people take that week off,” he said.