Loading dock - temperature control
For those that distribute frozen pallets of multiple products, do you have a refrigerated dock for picking your orders?
We are currently looking to add onto our building and are looking into a refrigerated dock (as the dock can be over 80 degrees in the summer). One person had said the temperature should be 36 degrees.
Does anyone currently have a cool area for this purpose? What is the temperature of this area?
Pizza & Sandwich,
We have a 8 door chill dock with ambient temperatures between 33 and 36f. While the Pacific Northwest has a moderate climate, we do get our warm days. Maintian our CCP of -10f for frozen product really has not been a problem, but maintianing chill between 32.5 and 40f is a real challenge when we mix loads with dry (ambient temp of 60-70f). We too are expanding our footprint and plan to add 7 doors to our frozen dock and an additional 15 to our chill dock. This will go a long way to mitigating overtemp issues with our customers.
MH
We keep the loading dock-staging area at 36 F. just like all the other coolers. The three dock bays have good trailers seal to mitigate cooling loss. USDA office is just off this area and so is their inspection room. The area has also got a dedicated portion for Food Safety-QA dept to evaluate incoming allergens, ingredients, labels before they go to storage, etc., and a place for various categories of samples, returns and QA supplies that must remain refrigerated.