Written by Valentin Scemama, Shipping Insurance & Logistics Expert at Secursus.

How to ship frozen food safely and efficiently ?

For a serious food business, shipping frozen food is never just moving a box from A to B. One summer heat wave, one box parked in the wrong hub overnight, and a full shipment is gone. When frozen food items arrive warm instead of cold or frozen, you lose the product, the refrigerated shipping cost, and customer trust. Your objective is simple: a repeatable cold-chain process that keeps temperature under control and protects the value of every frozen shipment with the right packaging, routing, and shipping insurance.

Before you pack a box: run these 3 checks every time

Before anyone starts packing a shipping container or insulated box, lock in three variables: product, temperature, time.

1. Understand how your product behaves under heat

Some frozen food products fail faster than others:

• Dense cuts of frozen meat (a 2 kg beef roast) hold cold longer thanks to their mass.
• Ice cream and dairy lose quality fast: a single thaw/refreeze cycle destroys texture and creates ice crystals.

Do not pack all frozen SKUs the same way. High-risk, high-value frozen meat, seafood, and other sensitive perishable food require more insulation, more dry ice or gel packs, tighter shipping windows, and stricter temperature requirements.

2. Set a hard temperature target

“Keep it frozen” is not a spec. For most frozen items, keep core product temperature at or below 0°F (-18°C) from pack-out to delivery, and treat prolonged exposure above typical refrigeration (around 40°F / 4°C) as unsafe. These ranges follow FDA and USDA food safety guidance on perishable food and the 40–140°F (4–60°C) “danger zone”.

Make the rule simple for your team: frozen products stay at less than or equal to 0°F (-18°C), chilled food stays between 32–40°F (0–4°C), and there is no multi-hour exposure in the 40–140°F (4–60°C) band.

3. Plan for actual transit time, not the label on the service

Carrier labels are marketing. Every carrier hub or handoff adds heat exposure, temperature fluctuations, and risk of delay. A 2-day air or Priority Mail route with several hubs is often the wrong option compared with a more direct or express service, especially in summer. Build in a buffer of 25–50% on top of the scheduled transit time. If you cannot cover the real transit time, don’t ship that product on that service.

Inside the cold chain: build a box that behaves like a mini freezer

Once you understand product, temperature range, and time, you design the food packaging.

Build a double-wall cold shell

Think in layers every time you ship frozen foods:

• Outer box: new corrugated box, rated for the weight you ship.
• Inner insulated container: a foam cooler or insulated container that fits snugly inside the shipping container.
• Void fill and padding: bubble wrap, foam, or kraft paper to eliminate free space and stop items from moving.

This double-wall setup blocks heat, limits impact, and helps maintain a zone of cold storage around the product during transit. To avoid moisture damage, wrap each piece of meat, portion of seafood, or ready meal in watertight plastic or a vacuum bag, and keep ice packs, gel packs, and dry ice away from bare cardboard.

Dry ice vs gel packs: pick the right cold engine

For frozen and chilled shipments, your “engine” is dry ice or gel packs:

• Dry ice (CO₂ solid): for fully frozen meat, seafood, and ice cream on routes up to ~48–72 h. It is freezing and keeps frozen items rock-hard, but requires vented containers (never airtight) and is classified as hazardous material with strict rules on weight and label.
• Gel packs / ice packs: for chilled food items and shorter shipments that must stay cool. They hold 0–4°C, are easy to handle and reusable, and have no hazmat rules, but do not provide deep-freeze.

Placement is non-negotiable: keep dry ice on top of products (cold air sinks) and spread gel packs and ice packs around the sides to stabilise the cold zone inside your insulated containers. As a starting benchmark, a 10–15 lb (4.5–7 kg) insulated shipment of frozen meat on a 24–36-hour route often needs 5–10 lb (2–4.5 kg) of dry ice, adjusted for season, destination, and shipping service.

How pros ship frozen meat: zero room for guesswork

For meat, tighten every variable: use thicker foam (1.5–2 in / 3–5 cm instead of 1 in) in the insulated container, prefer compact, fully packed boxes over large boxes with too much empty space, and increase refrigerant load, more dry ice or gel, especially for steaks, roasts, and ground meat that the customer keeps for several days. If test shipments show the core temperature rising above your targets, change the setup immediately.

Pros also control time: ship Monday to Wednesday, so shipments do not roll into the weekend. Default to overnight, 2-day air, express, or Priority Mail-type services in warm seasons. For large weight orders or pallets, use a refrigerated truck (LTL/FTL) and hand over to parcel only on the final leg.

What carriers cover (and what they don’t) on frozen shipments?

Shipping companies like FedEx, UPS, and USPS will move your frozen items, but they will not run your cold chain. Standard liability is often capped by weight, below the true value of a meat or seafood box or other frozen food items, and terms frequently exclude loss from temperature fluctuations and humidity. Dedicated shipping perishable and parcel insurance lets you insure the real declared value and maintain your margin when a shipment goes to the wrong place or arrives outside spec.

Managing complex logistics involves inherent risks. If you ship goods without package insurance, you are self-insuring against transit incidents by default. As your business grows, that is the wrong financial risk to carry alone.

This guide is aligned with FDA and USDA food safety guidance on perishable food and the temperature “danger zone”, plus USPS, FedEx, and UPS rules for shipping perishable items and packages with dry ice in the mail.