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Avoid Chargebacks in Food Distribution Business | LoadProof

 


our Business

  • You distribute food products, which could fall under Dry, Produce or Frozen categories
  • You distribute alcohol products
  • You distribute pharma products
  • While doing this you often run into OSD issues, Overage, Shortages and Damages
    1. Overages – You shipped more than ordered, which could result in non-compliance chargeback
    2. Shortages – You shipped less than what was ordered, which could result in non-compliance chargeback
    3. Damages – Your products arrived damaged, which would result in a rejected load or a damage claim
  • While shipping food products it is also very important to clean the trailers thoroughly in order to comply with FDA requirements, I had a customer once they would write lines and lines of cleanliness description in the system after washing their trailers thoroughly, so just in case something happens, they can go back to their customer and show them how well they have been cleaning the trailers
  • Another challenge while shipping produce or frozen items is that, you will have to hand off product at the right temperature or else the product could perish, so it Is important to show a picture of the temperature gauge and the temperature during hand off.
  • Also keep in mind that Food distribution is one of the challenging business to run because the margins are thin. That is why often food distribution centers use sophisticated systems such as Voice, Labor Management Systems, even Robotic systems to keep the cost as low as possible.
  • You could also ship to retailers
  • As a warehouse manager, you are responsible for the following
    • The manager leads and coordinates all aspects of the distribution process within the Supply Chain network.
      Leads site’s planning, execution, and communication of all daily clerical and operational processes, including:
      • Labor Planning & Driver Management
      • OSHA, FDA and DOT Compliance
      • General Administrative Duties
        1. Employee hiring
        2. Payroll
      • Customer Service Responsibilities
      • Human Resource Administration
      • Product Functionality Checks and Cleaning
      • Warehouse Functions/ Servant Leadership
      • Load Planning, Routing, and Carrier Management
      • Collection/Reporting of KPI data
      • Sometimes you are responsible for the P&L of the site as well
    • You could specialize in many products some of them are
      1. Handling Food grade products – FMCG
      2. FDA DEA Regulated
      3. Just keep in mind – if you are handling products that require FDA approval – you have to maintain all the documentation for up to 12 years, it could be anywhere upto 3 or 7 or 12 years. We have a customer, these guys ship health related products, every return they get, they need to maintain that returns documentation for 12 years, they have this large warehouse that has only papers – all the returns documentation from the returns they received.

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