The Freezers That Got Stuck in Peak Season

A restaurant group in Chicago was opening a new location right before Thanksgiving. They ordered sixteen undercounter freezers and twelve stainless steel work tables from us. Contract said forty-five days. The client made it very clear in the emails: the opening date is locked in, equipment has to be on site a week early.

Production went fine. Everything was done and inspected by day thirty-eight, ready for loading.

Then we hit the booking wall. The freight forwarder the client had designated was jammed up — peak season on the trans-Pacific route. Our shipment didn’t get on a vessel until twelve days past schedule. Then once it was on the water, the ports in LA were backed up. The container sat at anchorage for six days. By the time the equipment reached the client’s warehouse in Chicago, they had five days until opening. Eighteen days behind the original plan.

The client’s supply chain director called me. Calm guy, but you could hear the stress in his voice. “If those freezers aren’t running on opening day, the kitchen doesn’t run.”

I hung up and just sat there for a while. Production was perfect. But the client doesn’t care about vessel space or port congestion. He only knows his equipment didn’t show up.

I did three things.

First, I pulled the full timeline — when it got loaded, when it hit port, how many days it sat at anchorage. I attached the shipping line’s records and sent it all to the client. Not as an excuse. Just so he had a clear picture.

Second, I took four of the most critical freezers and put them on a plane. Shanghai to Chicago direct. They were there in three days. We covered 30% of the air freight; the client covered 70%. Why not all of it? Because the contract was clear on shipping responsibility, and the delay wasn’t a production issue on our side. But I was willing to split it, because I didn’t want him to open a restaurant with an empty kitchen.

Third, I called a service partner we work with in Chicago and had them on site two days early, waiting. The moment the equipment arrived, they installed it and powered it up the same day.

Forty-eight hours before opening, all sixteen freezers were running. Opening day went off without a hitch.

Afterwards, the client didn’t make a big deal of it. But he made one change: from then on, he stopped using his own freight forwarder. All logistics went through us.

I’ve thought about that one a lot. With ocean freight, nobody can guarantee nothing goes wrong. What the client actually cares about is, when something does go wrong, can you give him a straight answer fast — and a real plan to fix it. I can’t control vessel space. But I can control how transparent I am when things fall apart.

Planning a restaurant opening and need reliable equipment delivery? Contact our team to discuss logistics planning.

Frequently Asked Questions

How fast can you produce an order?

Standard production runs 3–5 days — in this case the equipment was finished and inspected by day 38 against a 45-day contract, even with sixteen freezers and twelve tables. Details: order and lead times.

What caused the delay in this case, and who fixed it?

Peak-season vessel space and port congestion — not production. The fix came from switching to direct-port routing with a different forwarder and inland trucking. Production was never the bottleneck; booking was.

Can you help plan the shipping schedule for a fixed opening date?

Yes — tell us the on-site date and we plan production, inspection, and booking backward from it, including buffer for peak-season sailings. See packaging and shipping for transit planning.