Cargo operations around New Orleans have ground to a halt as Hurricane Isaac moves in on the city, and American Trucking Associations urged truck drivers and motorists to take appropriate precautions ahead of the storm.
Isaac was upgraded to a hurricane from a tropical storm about noon Eastern time Tuesday and forecasters expected it to make landfall near New Orleans by early Wednesday, the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
While not as big a storm as Katrina, which was a stronger Category 3 hurricane at landfall, Isaac is a large, slow-moving system that forecasters said could dump a foot or more of rain in the region.
“We advise all drivers, commercial and commuter alike, make good travel decisions,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement. “No trip, and no delivery, is worth putting yourself or others in harm’s way.”
FedEx Corp. suspended service in a Louisiana parish that is under mandatory evacuation orders and anticipated delays in air-freight service in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, Bloomberg reported.
UPS Inc. suspended pickups and drop-offs in more than 20 postal-delivery zones, and planes that were idled have been removed from the area, a company spokesman told Bloomberg.
The Port of New Orleans closed its operations for Tuesday and Wednesday. The port moves about 500 million tons of cargo a year and more than 6,000 vessels move through it annually, Fox Business News reported.
Freight railroads rerouted traffic from New Orleans, interchanging east-west cargoes in cities including Birmingham, Ala., and Memphis, Tenn., Bloomberg reported.
