Two of Australia’s most well-established cold chain operators have closed their doors in the space of just a couple of years. Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics went under in 2023. Then in June 2025 after 77 whole years in business, Don Watson Transport also closed up shop. Neither collapse came as a shock to anyone watching the rising cost of fuel, the tightening labour market and the insurance premiums in the sector. The companies that are still hanging in there are having to rethink their procurement strategies in a whole different way than they were five years ago.
A Sector Already Struggling
The margins are thin and the costs are high in the temperature-controlled freight business. Thing is though, the room for manoeuvre, the scope for cutting costs and still delivering on time, has shrunk. Fuel prices, shortages of drivers and the cost of keeping trucks on the road that are increasingly old are all putting the squeeze on operators. So now they’re taking a much closer look at every single specification and procurement decision.
A truck body that costs a bit more upfront but will use less fuel, reduce the need for maintenance and can handle a wider variety of contracts is now a no-brainer in terms of cost management. It will pay for itself in ways that a standard issue body won’t. And yet it seems a lot of operators are still treating it like a formality, simply a form to fill in before making their buying decision.
What Do The New FSANZ Standards Mean For Body Construction?
In 2025, FSANZ came in with new standards for primary production and processing, particularly targeting berries, leafy greens and melons, but also creating new documentation and temperature monitoring requirements that will affect all sorts of carriers across the board.
Any ‘Commercial refrigerated truck body’ operating in the food supply chain now needs to have real-time temperature recording standard capability, not some retrofitted addition. Bodies that don’t have the integrated cable routing, mounting points and data logger housing built in are going to be much more expensive to upgrade after the fact than it would have been to get it right at the build stage.
The materials used in the construction of the body that can withstand all the cleaning and sanitising that comes with these new food safety standards are now just a baseline requirement, no longer a premium option. A body that breaks down after regular cleaning or has seams and joints where contamination builds up is going to create compliance headaches for the carrier and the food business alike.
Composite Panels And The Weight Vs Insulation Trade Off
Composite panels these days are delivering much higher insulation R values at a much lower tare weight than the older foam-injected aluminium skin type construction. And the difference in weight compounds as you go, every 100kg of tare weight that can be saved translates to extra payload or better fuel efficiency on every journey every vehicle makes.
The performance of a cold body really lives or dies with the integrity of the joints. Most of the cold loss in commercial bodies isn’t from the surface of the panel, it’s from the joints between panels and the seals around the doors. What kind of joint you spec and the quality of the seals is what matters most, not just how thick the panels themselves are. And that’s a detail that often gets left out of the budget build discussions.
People who are just looking at panel thickness without considering the design of the joints are optimising the wrong thing.
Multi-Temperature Bodies And Shifting Customer Demographics
Delivery of groceries and pharmaceuticals online is driving the constant need for multi-compartment bodies that accommodate the loading of products at chilled, frozen and ambient temperatures. Multi-temperature bodies offer much better contract terms than single-temperature food freight because fewer carriers can provide them, which results in better rates.
When specifying single-temperature commercial refrigerated truck bodies, fleet managers limit themselves in their choice of the type of contract work they can get without reducing the cost of a vehicle. A multi-temperature body is costly, but it increases the flexibility of contract work and brings better utilisation of the vehicle over its entire lifespan.
Pharmaceutical cold chains have become the toughest part of the market. Biologics and sensitive medications need a certain tolerance level that cannot be provided by standard food transport bodies. Those carriers who developed such capabilities in their fleets have contracts which are much more defensible in price.
Integration Of Refrigeration Units: When Body Build Drives The Unit Life Span
The life span of the refrigeration unit is defined to a great extent by the way the body is designed around it. Bad airflow will force the refrigeration unit to work harder, thus cycling more often and loading the system more than it would do in case of proper body design. Compressor lifespan directly depends on the duty cycle, i.e. when a unit works 20% harder than it has to, its lifespan is shortened proportionally.
The way the unit is mounted in a truck, evaporator positioning and return air path need to be designed right from the beginning. Otherwise, retrofitting of the body in order to improve the airflow management will be very costly and ineffective. One has to discuss the choice of a refrigeration unit and the body design at the same time.
Selection of diesel or electric standby units now has additional implications which are related to the presence of electrical connection at the depot and the state policy concerning emissions. If operators don’t take into account these aspects in their decision-making, one of the cost components will remain uncovered.
