Cold chain & food distribution
Refrigeration is a constraint, not a preference.
Most routing tools treat a refrigerated requirement as a scoring penalty — something to avoid if convenient. GoLoop treats it as a rule that cannot be broken. A chilled consignment is only ever assigned to a vehicle with a refrigerated compartment that still has room for it. If no such vehicle exists, GoLoop tells you, rather than quietly producing a plan that ruins the load.
- Constraint type
- Hard — never traded off against distance
- Vehicle model
- Multiple typed compartments per vehicle
- Infeasible days
- Reported, not silently mis-planned
What goes wrong
The plan looks fine until the load is ruined.
A generic optimiser sees a stop, a weight and a location. It does not know that pallet has to stay at 2°C, or that the van it just assigned has no chilled compartment. The plan comes back looking efficient, and the error surfaces at the loading bay — or worse, at the customer.
- Chilled and frozen goods assigned to ambient vehicles
- Refrigerated capacity treated as though it were general capacity
- Planners re-checking every route by hand, which is where the time goes
- A load written off, and a conversation with the customer about it
Why generic tools do this
Vehicle routing solvers optimise a cost function. The natural way to express “prefer a refrigerated van” is to add a penalty — so the solver will still break the rule if the distance saved outweighs the penalty.
That is mathematically reasonable and operationally useless. A cold-chain breach is not expensive; it is unacceptable. It belongs in the constraint model, not the cost function.
The model
Compartments, not vehicles.
Vehicles carry typed compartments
A vehicle is described as one or more containers, each with its own type and capacity. A van with a chilled box and ambient space behind it is two containers, not one, with separate room in each.
Jobs declare what they need
Each consignment states its requirements — refrigerated, frozen, tail-lift, a qualified driver. These are matched against compartments, not guessed from the address or the customer.
The solver cannot break the match
A job is only ever placed in a compartment that satisfies every requirement and still has capacity. There is no distance saving large enough to override it.
If the day genuinely cannot be served with the fleet you have, GoLoop returns the jobs it could not place rather than producing a plan that quietly fails.
Mixed loads
One vehicle, several temperatures.
Multi-temperature vehicles are normal in food distribution and awkward for most optimisers, because capacity stops being a single number.
Separate capacities
Each compartment has its own weight and volume limit. Filling the chilled box does not consume the ambient space, and vice versa.
No cross-contamination by accident
Frozen, chilled and ambient goods are matched to the compartment that suits them, so a plan never assumes a shared space that does not exist.
Realistic loading
Because capacity is tracked per compartment, the vehicle GoLoop assigns is one that can physically take the load as it is actually carried.
Deadlines that matter
Latest-delivery times are hard time windows, so goods with a limited window out of temperature control are sequenced to meet them, not just visited eventually.
What this is and isn't
GoLoop plans the day. It doesn't watch the fridge.
GoLoop is a planning engine, not a monitoring system. It decides which vehicle takes which consignment and in what order, so that the cold chain holds if the plan is followed. It does not read temperature probes, log conditions in transit, or produce compliance records — that is your telematics and your quality system, and GoLoop is designed to sit alongside them rather than replace them.
Alongside temperature
The rest of the hard case still applies.
Read more about what GoLoop is built for.
Questions
Cold chain routing, answered plainly.
Can route optimisation software handle refrigerated deliveries?
Most can express a preference for a refrigerated vehicle; fewer treat it as a rule that cannot be broken. GoLoop models refrigeration as a hard constraint, so a chilled consignment is only ever assigned to a vehicle with a suitable compartment and the capacity to take it.
How does GoLoop stop a chilled job going on an ambient vehicle?
Each job declares what it requires and each vehicle declares the compartments it has. The solver only considers assignments where every requirement is satisfied, so an ambient-only vehicle is never a candidate for a job that needs refrigeration — regardless of how close it happens to be.
Can one vehicle carry both chilled and ambient goods?
Yes. A vehicle is described as several typed containers, each with its own capacity. A van with a chilled box and ambient space is modelled as two compartments, and GoLoop tracks the room in each independently as it builds the route.
Does GoLoop monitor the temperature during delivery?
No. GoLoop is a planning engine — it decides who carries what and in what order so the cold chain holds if the plan is followed. Live temperature monitoring, in-transit logging and compliance records come from your telematics and quality systems, which GoLoop is designed to work alongside.
What if the day cannot be served with the refrigerated fleet available?
GoLoop reports it. Jobs it could not place come back in an unassigned list with the plan, so a planner can see the shortfall and decide what to do — rather than discovering it at the loading bay.
Can it re-plan mid-day without breaking the cold chain?
Yes. Constraints are re-applied on every solve, including re-planning that happens after drivers have left, so a job added at 11am is still only offered to a vehicle that can carry it properly. See mid-day re-planning for how that works.
Send us one real day.
The quickest way to see whether this holds up is to try it on your own operation. Send us one typical busy day — your fleet and your jobs, as two spreadsheets — and we'll run it through GoLoop and send back the optimised manifest, plus the difference against how the day actually ran: kilometres, driver hours, and time windows met.
- Free, no install and no integration
- Back with you within five working days
- Anonymise the customer names — we only need real addresses
- Your file is used for this test only, and deleted within 30 days
Or email hello@building8.io directly, with your two spreadsheets attached.
Or request early access if you'd rather talk first.
A day with tight windows, mixed temperatures and awkward sites tells us far more than a quiet one.