12 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Refrigerated 3PL

Handing your stock to a third party is an act of trust — and in cold chain, a bad choice does not just mean late orders, it means spoiled product and recalls. These are the twelve questions we would ask any refrigerated 3PL, including us. A good provider will answer all of them without flinching.

Compliance and food safety

1. Are you HACCP certified — and can I see the certificate? Certification should be current, site-specific and cover the services you are buying: storage, pick and pack, and transport. Ask for the certificate number and check who issued it.

2. What happens when a temperature excursion occurs? The answer you want is a documented corrective-action procedure: who gets notified, how fast, what happens to the affected stock, and what paperwork you receive.

3. Can you support a product recall? Batch and date-code traceability should let them tell you exactly which orders contained an affected batch, within hours — not days of digging through paper.

Temperature control

4. What temperature bands do you run, and where is the proof? Chilled and frozen rooms should be continuously logged with alarms, not spot-checked with a clipboard. Ask to see a week of logger data.

5. Is temperature monitored in transit, or only in the warehouse? The truck is where most cold chains break. Vehicles should log temperature for the whole run, and you should be able to get that data per delivery.

6. How do you handle receival temperature checks? Product should be probed on arrival and rejected or flagged if it is out of spec — otherwise you inherit someone else’s cold chain failure.

Systems and visibility

7. Can I see my stock levels and orders online? A web-based system with live stock on hand, order status and delivery confirmation is the baseline in 2026. If reporting means “email us and we will check”, keep looking.

8. How are picks verified? Scan-verified picking catches wrong-item and wrong-quantity errors at the point of pick. Paper pick slips do not.

9. How do orders get to you? Look for flexible order intake — portal entry, CSV upload or integration with your store — so your team is not re-keying orders.

Commercial fit

10. What are your minimums? Big 3PLs often want 20–50 pallets before they will talk. If you are a growing brand, find a provider that scales from one pallet — you can always negotiate volume rates later.

11. What is the full fee schedule? Storage, handling in/out, picks, packaging, re-stacks, after-hours receival. If any of it is “we will confirm later”, the quote is not a quote. (Our cold storage pricing guide covers what each line means.)

12. Who answers the phone? In a cold chain incident, minutes matter. Ask whether you get a named contact at the depot or a national call centre — and test it: call the warehouse before you sign.

Red flags at a glance

You hear	It usually means
“We are working towards certification”	No independent food safety audit has passed yet.
“The driver keeps an eye on the temp”	No in-transit logging — no proof if something goes wrong.
“We will sort out the fees as we go”	The headline rate is bait; the invoice will surprise you.
“Stock reports go out monthly”	No live system — you will be flying blind between reports.

Frequently asked questions