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When a press release arrived announcing that Cookeville, Tenn.-based Averitt Express now offers temperature-con-trolled less-than-truckload (LTL) service using self-contained pallet-mount-ed units, we had a flashback to the early ’90s. Back then, a similar venture—known as the Pallet Reefer—was launched by Louis P. Saia III, a member of the family that founded and later sold the trucking company that still bears their name. Like Averitt’s unit, Saia’s container was specifically designed for LTL transportation and to fit on a standard pallet. The Pallet Reefer business eventually failed, following a legal dispute between the inventor and his joint venture partner.

For its new service, Averitt will use the self-powered Cold Box, which is designed and manufactured by Climate Controlled Containers Inc. The units can handle frozen and refrigerated cargo, which allows shippers to move goods without the need for refrigerated trailers, and can also be used to keep cargo warm. The Cold Boxes operate on batteries that can last up to 150 hours, according to the manufacturer.

Averitt says the units are particularly well suited for temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical and specialty chemical payloads. They come with a 24/7 tracking feature, which allows customers to monitor everything from temperature and humidity to entry and function alarms. Customers can track their shipments live on the Web via any device and can even watch their shipments via live video. That capability makes this an especially fortuitous time to launch the service: The Cold Box could help shippers improve regulatory compliance at a time when both pharmaceuticals and food products are coming under increasingly stringent rules regarding chain of custody and product quality.

Cold Box is not the only such product on the market, by the way. One Stop Critical offers the Critical Cube, a portable refrigeration unit for LTL shipments that uses liquid carbon dioxide and a digital controller to maintain temperatures of as low as - 30 degrees F for five days. The manufacturer expects to make it available nationwide in the first half of 2014.

An idea whose time has come (again)?

Forget Amazon’s delivery drones. How about drones that place packages onto pallets? Qimarox, a Netherlands-based maker of material handling equipment, has created a colorful video of drones flying around a warehouse and dropping cartons onto pallets in a staging area. The video was created using industrial simulation modeling software from Emulate 3D.

Drones would require little superstructure or hardware, and so could be rapidly deployed at little expense, Qimarox said in a statement. Because weight would be a limiting factor, this type of system would most likely appeal to high-volume shippers of small parcels. One concern, though, would be battery life. Qimarox said that future improvements in battery technology would make the scheme feasible.

The video can be seen on You Tube at http://youtu.be/rG3Frwaa47E.

Palletizing drones: Pie in the sky?

Nearly every international airfreight forwarder and carrier has a tale or two about an unusual consignment. The Sub-Saharan Africa Services division of DHL Express, however, appears to have had more than its share.

In a press release, Sumesh Rahavendra, head of marketing for the region, noted that the number of strange food-delivery requests has been increasing. The most unusual, perhaps, was 70 pounds of haggis (a Scottish meat pudding made from lamb innards), flown from the United Kingdom to Tanzania for an event.

Rahavendra also noted that DHL often transports human eyes to Kenya for surgical purposes. The corneas have an extremely short life span and are highly perishable. Because the recipient is prepped for surgery while the cornea is in transit, success depends on prior customs releases, dedicated delivery vehicles, and a team that is willing to pull out all the stops, he said.

Other unusual deliveries: a load of laundry from the U.K. to a Southern African country for dry cleaning; 1.7 tons of fresh flowers to Cameroon for a double wedding; and a delivery in Kenya of rare butterfly lar-vae that would die if delayed. (Local staff followed the same process used for corneal transplants to ensure on-time delivery.)