Owner Chris Porricelli's CAP Trucking currently hauls refrigerated trailers with five trucks under its authority, including one owner-operator leased on.
For Sanford, Florida-based Chris Porricelli, 2021 will go down as a year of transition. With 11 years behind his current five-truck CAP Trucking fleet, pulling reefers along lanes stretching from Florida to the Northeast and back, he ended the year with solid profits. His company's total revenues look more like those of a fleet twice CAP's size or bigger, buoyed by the semi-regular contract work of 8-10 owner-operators Porricelli also arranges northbound LTL loads for from his direct customers. And that fact illustrates what might be Porricelli's biggest strength -- a close focus on satisfying those customers' needs, and extending that focus through his company drivers and one leased owner.
Since converting all of his reefer trailers (the company now owns 7) to multi-temp-capable wagons with temperature-monitoring trackers from Thermo King, he's gotten very good at maximizing use of available space for freight.
When Porricelli first started arranging LTL movements "four or five years ago," he said, plenty in the produce business warned him, "you're going to work," and work hard. Yet clearly he's got the acumen for it. "It's fun," even, he said, "a little more of a challenge ... helping split up the loads – 'this needs be there by Tuesday, but this delivers Monday.'
"It makes you think a little bit."
After losing a substantial portion of contract business with a farm to rate undercutting, in 2021 he escalated his pursuit of partial loads, building more business and keeping his operators happy. He "linked up with a guy from Colombia who air-freights to Miami twice a week" with produce. That led to another customer in Boynton Beach, Florida, "with two loads a week," Poricelli said. "Somebody tried to hold me back and I ran away with something even better."
Success in the thinking man's game that is LTL reefer hasn't come instantly, that's for sure, Porricelli noted. He had to work for it, and his success has landed him as a semi-finalist for Overdrive's 2022 Small Fleet Champ award, in the 3-10-truck category.
