Produce picked from the field has a long road before arriving on the consumer’s plate. First, the harvested food immediately goes to a cooling facility located near the field. From the cooling facility, trucks take the commodity to a distribution center. Finally, the produce is transported to the grocery stores. For these trips, shippers typically use in-transit loggers to insure that the carrier did what was necessary to provide and deliver the commodities that the receiver purchased. This data is also important in complying with FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) as well as in maximizing shelf life of the produce and in providing supporting evidence in the event of temperature excursions that cause the produce to spoil.
Yet, this insurance and peace-of-mind for the shipper would be lost if the loader forgets to start the logger. For these reasons, DeltaTrak® has developed and patented Shadow Log®, a fail-safe technology to protect shippers for exactly those occasions. For example, if a loader forgets to start a FlashTrak® Mini PDF Logger, the logger will still provide data and guarantee a trip despite the start button never being pressed. Then, at the end of the journey, the receiver simply plugs the logger into any computer with a USB port and immediately accesses the trip report. No adapters or separate software is required for downloading. The software is built into the DeltaTrak logger to make it a complete plug-and-play device.