Who ships beer, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships beer

Five brewers from a field of nearly ten thousand. The distributor tier behind them is where most of the short-haul freight sits.

Ask for the brewery's logistics manager, and then ask who their distributors are. The three-tier system means the distributor is a separate company with its own warehouses and its own freight problem, and it is usually the easier door. Regional distributors run constant short-haul volume and are chronically short of trucks in summer.

Where it hauls

Two very different maps. The large brewers run a small number of very large plants placed to serve regions, so those lanes are long, scheduled and mostly contracted. The craft layer is nearly ten thousand breweries, overwhelmingly regional, shipping shorter distances in smaller quantities and far more likely to need a broker. Between brewer and retailer sits the distributor, a legally separate business in most states, and that tier moves an enormous amount of local freight. The brewers to know:

How to open

Ask whether they need temperature control. Plenty of beer moves protected rather than ambient, and a broker who raises it before the shipper does is not the usual call.

Qualifying questions

• What does it scale? Beer is mostly water in glass or aluminium and it weighs out well before it cubes out. Cans are lighter than bottles, kegs heavier again. Get the pack format and target gross before you quote.
• Does it need temperature control? More than people assume. Unpasteurised and hop-forward beer degrades with heat, and freezing ruins anything. Ask whether they want protection from heat, protection from freezing, or a true setpoint.
• Kegs, cans or bottles? Kegs are heavy, awkward and come back empty, which means a return leg. Cases palletize cleanly. Glass breaks. Three different handling problems, so ask which is on the trailer.
• Brewery to distributor, or distributor to retail? The first is a real truckload lane. The second is short, multi-stop and often on the distributor's own fleet. The three-tier system means these are separate companies, so establish who is actually hiring you.
• Is there a date code or freshness window? Beer carries freshness dating and retailers reject short-dated product. A delayed load can arrive legally fine and commercially worthless. Confirm the window before you accept a long lane.

When to call

February and March, as the summer build begins. Production ramps well before the heat, because the peak selling weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day cannot be supplied from a standing start. Autumn brings a second, smaller build for the holidays. Mid-summer calls are quoting overflow into a market that is already tight.