Shipping conditions and what carriers owe you

A package marked “Keep at 2 to 8 °C” is making a request. Whether the request is honored depends on what was packed around the material, what was agreed with the carrier, and whether anyone recorded what actually happened on the way. Good distribution practice treats these as three separate pieces of work, and the gaps between them are where most temperature problems in transit begin.

Responsibility stays with the shipper

The starting point in good distribution practice is that handing a package to a carrier does not hand over responsibility for its condition. The EU guidelines on good distribution practice place the duty to keep products within acceptable temperature limits during transport on the supplying distributor, and expect it to be possible to show, whatever the mode of transport, that products were not exposed to conditions that could affect their quality. When transport is outsourced, the guidelines expect a written agreement that sets out each party's responsibilities.

The World Health Organization's technical supplements on storing and transporting time- and temperature-sensitive products take the same approach, with separate supplements on profiling transport routes and on qualifying shipping containers. The common thread is that the shipper has to know the conditions a package will meet and has to pack for them.

What the shipper specifies

A shipment that depends on temperature starts with a written specification. It usually states:

• the acceptable temperature range and any limit on time spent outside it;
• the maximum transit time the packaging is qualified to cover;
• the packaging configuration, including coolant type, conditioning and placement;
• labeling for temperature, orientation and any hazard classification;
• the documents that travel with the package, and what the receiver must check on arrival.

Packaging is chosen and qualified against that specification. A passive shipper, meaning an insulated box with conditioned coolant packs, is tested against hot and cold ambient profiles that represent the route and the season, and is qualified for a stated number of hours. ISTA publishes test procedures for this kind of thermal packaging. A shipper qualified for a winter lane is not qualified for a summer one, and a box qualified for two days is not qualified for the weekend it spends in a depot after a missed delivery.

What a carrier contract commits to

A standard parcel service generally commits to collecting a package and delivering it to an address within its published service terms. It does not usually commit to a temperature. The package travels in the same vehicles, sorting halls and depots as everything else, and the terms commonly limit liability to loss or physical damage, not to a change in what is inside.

Temperature commitments come from temperature-controlled services and from the agreement that goes with them. A useful agreement goes well beyond the name of the service. It sets out the lanes and transit times, the conditions in vehicles and holding areas, what happens when a delivery fails or a connection is missed, how quickly the carrier must report a delay, and who holds the temperature records. It also states how excursions are investigated and reported. Where the agreement is silent on a point, the carrier owes nothing on it.

Data loggers settle the question

Without a record, a package that arrives looking fine tells the receiver nothing about the journey. A calibrated temperature logger packed with the material does. It is started at pack-out, records at a fixed interval throughout transit, and is stopped and read on receipt. Its trace shows the whole journey: the time on the loading dock, the hours in a depot, the night in a parked vehicle.

Loggers need the same discipline as any other instrument. Each should have a calibration certificate covering the range of interest, a known accuracy, and a record of which shipment it traveled with. Placement matters too: a probe pressed against a coolant pack reads differently from one beside the material.

Handling an excursion

The receiver's job is to read the trace before accepting the material into stock. If every reading is within range, the trace is filed with the shipment record. If any reading is outside it, the material is quarantined until someone qualified decides what the excursion means.

That decision rests on data. How far outside the range did the temperature go, and for how long? Do the stability data for the material cover an exposure of that size? A short, small excursion may be shown to have no effect; a long or large one may mean the material cannot be used. Either way, the evaluation, the decision and the evidence are recorded. The investigation then turns to cause: the packaging, the route, the handling, or the carrier's performance against the agreement. That last question is where the written agreement earns its keep, because it defines what the carrier promised and what it now has to explain.