Why frozen can't ride the dry truck

What goes wrong when frozen rides dry

A generic multi-stop planner sees addresses, windows, and miles. It does not know which van has a freezer and which is ambient. The closest stop wins. The frozen box thaws on a warm rural hop. The member opens a soft package. The driver invents a same-day workaround that never becomes next week's rule.

That failure mode is familiar to anyone who packs mixed frozen meat, chilled dairy, and dry goods on the same morning. Miles still matter. Capability matters first.

USDA's food-safety guidance for food shipped to consumers is that perishable orders should arrive frozen, or at or below 40°F on arrival. A frozen box that rides a dry, ambient van does not get a second chance to meet that line — which is exactly why the vehicle a stop rides on has to be decided before the van leaves, not guessed at the door.

Temperature as a hard vehicle rule, not a sticky note

In Porch Routes every vehicle declares what it can carry: frozen, refrigerated, dry, or a mix. The optimiser treats that as a hard constraint. It will not place a frozen stop on a dry truck to save distance. If no capable vehicle is on the plan that day, the stop stays unassigned with the reason written out before anything is loaded.

• Per-vehicle capability. Mark each van honestly for frozen, refrigerated, and dry.
• Hard constraint in the build. Temperature is not a tag you hope a dispatcher notices.
• Unassigned with a reason. A stop that cannot ride safely waits instead of riding wrong.
• Orders without a class. An order sent without a temperature rides as its coldest item.
• Unknown weights flagged. Missing weights are never counted as zero.

What you need before your first route

Before you build the first route, mark every van's temperature capability honestly — a van that merely feels cool in the morning is not the same as one that holds a frozen or refrigerated temperature over a full loop. Addresses resolve on OpenStreetMap, so there is no Google Maps key to buy or billing account to set up. Import this week's stops from a CSV or your order system, mark frozen and refrigerated classes where they apply, and the rest of the setup is picking a day and the vans, then building the route.

Who this rule is for

This page is for farms, ranches, CSAs, butchers, and specialty food businesses that pack orders and load their own vans. It is not courier-marketplace dispatch. One day, several vehicles, one plan that respects what each truck can carry. Butchers running frozen meat subscriptions see the same constraint in butcher frozen meat delivery routing and on the butchers and meat industry page.

USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 116,617 U.S. farms selling directly to consumers, totaling $3.26 billion in sales. A meaningful share of those businesses pack a mixed morning — frozen, chilled, and dry on the same route — which is exactly the situation a hard vehicle rule is built to protect.

From orders to a plan that respects the cold chain

1. 1

   Orders come in with a temperature class

   Send them over the API with your own order number, import a CSV, or add them by hand. Mark frozen, refrigerated, or dry where it matters. Addresses resolve on OpenStreetMap — no map key to buy.

2. 2

   Mark each vehicle honestly

   A dry produce van stays dry. A reefer or freezer van stays capable. Mixed capability is fine when the truck truly holds both.

3. 3

   Build the routes

   Porch Routes splits stops by what each vehicle can carry, fits windows and capacity, and leaves unsafe stops unassigned with a clear reason.

4. 4

   Dispatch and prove delivery

   Each driver gets a link. Drive mode runs in the phone browser: one stop at a time, hand-off to maps, photo or signature proof, and an undo window before the customer is told.

What drivers see on their phone

Drivers do not need an account or an app install to run a route. Dispatching texts a link that opens drive mode in the phone's own browser: one stop at a time, in big type, with a button to hand off to Google Maps or Apple Maps for the actual driving. Delivered, Couldn't deliver, and Skip are one tap with a quick reason, photos and signatures are captured at the door, and a mis-tap can be undone for a few minutes before the customer hears anything. On a rural road with no signal, updates queue on the phone and sync once it reconnects.

A mixed morning, worked out

Say a Wednesday route has 18 stops: 7 need a frozen box, 5 need refrigerated dairy or meat, and 6 are dry pantry or produce drops. With one freezer van and one dry van on the schedule, the plan puts the 7 frozen stops and the 5 refrigerated stops on the freezer van if it can hold both classes, fills the dry van with the 6 ambient stops, and — if the freezer van cannot take all 12 cold stops on its capacity — leaves the overflow unassigned with the reason attached instead of finishing the dry van's day by loading a frozen box onto it.

Cold chain for small own fleets

Hard vehicle temperature rules are the routing half of cold chain for a small delivery fleet. Packing, insulation, and how long a door stays open still matter on the road — see cold chain for small delivery fleets. The planner's job is simpler and stricter: never assign the wrong class of stop to the wrong class of truck.

A loading checklist before the first stop

1. Every vehicle's temperature capability marked honestly, not guessed from how the cab feels that morning.
2. Every order carries a class, or the coldest item on it decides for the whole box.
3. Routes built with zero unassigned stops — or a clear reason next to each one that is.
4. Frozen and refrigerated boxes loaded last, dry goods loaded first, so cold doors open fewest times.
5. Driver links sent only after the route is actually built, not the night before on a guess.

What you can do on Porch Light (free)

Porch Light is free up to 150 orders a month with no credit card. That is enough to run a real weekly farm, CSA, or butcher day and see unassigned reasons before you pay. Every feature sits on every plan; plans differ by order volume, included customer texts, and support.