Beverage is one of the few product categories where the temperature risk in Canada runs in the cold direction rather than the hot one. Water expands when it freezes, and a can, bottle or bag-in-box that freezes solid does not simply thaw back to saleable product. Cans distort and seams fail, glass cracks, closures push out, and the load is scrap even when it looks intact on the pallet. Between roughly November and April on most Canadian lanes, and later than that on northern and Prairie routes, the freeze risk is the dominant loss risk on beverage freight and it needs to be handled explicitly rather than hoped through.
The important commercial point is that standard dry van carriage does not cover it. Carrier liability terms generally exclude damage from freezing unless a protective service was ordered and paid for, which means a shipper who tenders a winter beverage load as ordinary dry freight is carrying the entire risk without knowing it. Ordering protect-from-freeze service, or a temperature-controlled trailer running a low set point, moves that risk onto a service the carrier has actually agreed to provide. It is a small line on the rate and it is the difference between a claim you can file and one you cannot.
Protect-from-freeze and full temperature control are not the same service and they cost differently. Protect-from-freeze uses a reefer unit cycling only enough to hold the box above freezing, which suits beer, water, juice and most packaged non-alcoholic product moving in winter. A specified set point with continuous run and a recorded temperature trace suits wine, certain spirits, kombucha and anything live or unpasteurised, where the customer or the producer needs evidence of the range the product travelled in. Choosing the cheaper service is fine, but it has to be a decision rather than an oversight.
Exposure happens at the ends more often than in transit. A trailer holds temperature reasonably well while it is moving and loses it fast at an open dock, in a yard drop overnight, or during a cross-dock where pallets sit on an unheated floor waiting for the next trailer. Those are the points where winter beverage loads are actually lost. We plan winter beverage lanes to minimise cross-docks, avoid unheated overnight yard drops where we can, and where a drop is unavoidable we make sure the unit is running and the trailer is not simply parked.
Finally, document what happened. A temperature trace from the trailer, a note of the dwell at each stop and the ambient conditions on the route turn a suspected freeze claim into a provable one. Without them, a carrier and a receiver can argue about where the damage occurred for months and the shipper absorbs it. We ask for the download on protected loads as a matter of course, and we keep it with the shipment file rather than waiting for a claim to go looking for it.
