Project overview
Harvest waits for nobody.
For six weeks each summer, a Kent fruit cooperative moves 300 tonnes a day from orchard to packhouse — and every hour of delay costs grade and money. Cargolane runs the entire seasonal fleet: timed farm collections, shuttle trunking and standby trailers at the packhouse door.
- Client: cooperative of 14 growers, 2,100 acres
- Volume: 9,400 pallets across a six-week season
- Fleet: 22 timed trailers plus 4 standby at peak
Challenge & approach
Ripe fruit, tight windows.
The challenge
Picking crews work dawn to dusk and packhouse slots shift daily with ripeness. The previous haulier missed one slot in five, and rejected loads spiked every hot week.
The approach
We stationed a planner in the packhouse office, set 90-minute collection windows per farm, and held standby trailers through every heatwave week.
The outcome
99.4% of slots hit across the season, rejected loads down by two thirds, and the cooperative renewed for three years.
Project gallery
On the farm run.
