Hi MW1414,
This depends on the conditions of the dock that the products are sitting on: temperature on the dock, proximity to open dock doors (used at load/unload shipments), foot/associate traffic on the dock - to name a few, not to mention the condition and make-up of the product arriving. If product arrives frozen, best practice is to run it in to freezers immediately or as soon as is possible - to avoid water/ice crystals forming and affecting product. Never is it acceptable to let product remain on the dock for protracted or extended periods especially if close to open doors or access points as product may experience rapid temperature changes.
As to your question regarding staging times, this depends on the nature of your operation - are you a large warehouse with multiple freezers or a smaller warehouse, do you have outbound operations scheduled every hour on the hour or are outbounds few throughout your day, how many warehouse employees? Our warehouse stages (in freezer staging areas) orders on a staggered basis: evening shift stages the next day's morning shift orders and morning shift stages evening orders to expedite product transfer. It doesn't always work because there is always a hiccup, pending product, product delays, etc.
Having been in Customer Service (Shipping and Receiving), I know that sometimes your warehouse crew finds it easy to offload a truck to get them out of the yard and will leave it on the dock to run to the freezers. Our warehouse policy is to record temperature at arrival and notify our customers when product arrives at or above 10°F. Warehouse team will not allow product to go anywhere near 10°F.
I hope some of this was useful...
Blessings,
- Bob.