One of the biggest headlines in the past few weeks concerning the food supply chain, is the giant e-commerce company, Amazon, buying the organic and holistic grocery chain, Whole Foods. The grocery store was sold for $13.7 billion. The question arises, what does this mean for the transportation industry and the food and beverage industry? Industry experts claim that it might even help the trucking industry, by creating a greater demand for fresh produce.Perishable foods require 3PLs such as East Coast Transport to continually invest in technology advancements to ensure the safety of the foods. ECT readily embraces these improvements in food safety for the betterment of the supply chain and ultimately the consumer. Some of these advancements are the use of mobile technology, the use of produce tagging, real-time updates in electronic logging devices (ELD), and GPS tracking. Those companies who do not choose to implement the advancements could be overlooked by the home delivery companies, such as Amazon Fresh, Blue Apron, and even Walmart.
Many people are already vocalizing that Amazon and Whole Foods may, in fact, solve the food desert. A food desert in the United States is 
when there are no retail food stores within one mile of a residential area, impacting a total of 23 million Americans and over 6 million children. East Coast Transport knows first-hand how difficult it is to manage a perishable logistics network since a large percentage of ECT’s loads are either fresh or frozen perishable foods and beverages. Although Amazon Fresh currently delivers to a hand full of northeastern states, these are densely populated areas with maintained roads. This obstacle might be overcome, once the new transport bill is agreed upon in both the house and senate. It would infuse over $1 trillion into the construction and repair of roads.
when there are no retail food stores within one mile of a residential area, impacting a total of 23 million Americans and over 6 million children. East Coast Transport knows first-hand how difficult it is to manage a perishable logistics network since a large percentage of ECT’s loads are either fresh or frozen perishable foods and beverages. Although Amazon Fresh currently delivers to a hand full of northeastern states, these are densely populated areas with maintained roads. This obstacle might be overcome, once the new transport bill is agreed upon in both the house and senate. It would infuse over $1 trillion into the construction and repair of roads.At East Coast Transport we offer perishable food transport with the highest food safety in mind. This means we track all products using GPS point checks and temperature tagging systems to ensure the quality of the perishables. If you would like to know more about our process, please contact us at info@eastcoasttransport.com