Storm Strikes Pacific Northwest

By Sarah Godfrey, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Dec. 10 print edition of Transport Topics.

A storm with hurricane-force winds and torrential rainfall swept across the Pacific Northwest early last week, snarling transportation in Washington and Oregon and flooding a crucial freight-carrying highway.

A 20-mile stretch of Interstate 5, the major connection between Portland, Ore., and Seattle, was closed south of Seattle because portions were under 10 feet of water after the storm hit Dec. 2-3. State officials were unsure when they could reopen the route.

The closure forced commercial trucks to either park and wait or use long, costly detours, namely a 200-mile alternate through Yakima, Wash.

Describing the situation to Transport Topics, Jim Tutton, vice president of the Washington Trucking Associations, said carriers in the region were “operating at about 50% productivity at twice the cost.”

“It has been challenging, to say the least,” said Robert Russell, president of Oregon Trucking Associations. Closing I-5 “has wreaked absolute havoc with schedules for long-haul folks moving up into northern Washington.”

The Seattle Times reported that 11,000 trucks travel the affected stretch of I-5 on a normal day.

“Commerce is affected,” said Stan Vander Pol, president of the Au-burn, Wash.-based carrier Peninsula Truck Lines. “We have loads backed up, [and] other carriers, I’m sure, have loads backed up. Trailers are not getting empty and can’t get [new] loads.”

Washington Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond told re-porters on Dec. 4 that truck delays due to the I-5 closing cost about $4 million a day.

Michael S. Card, president of Central Point, Ore., carrier Combined Transport, said that his fleet began detouring on Dec. 4, with the drivers going 150 to 200 miles out of their way.

“They’re going up and around I-5, through Yakima in the center of the state to the Snoqualmie Pass on [Interstate] 84,” Card said. “The problem with Snoqualmie Pass is, if there is snow, there’s a problem getting into the Seattle/Tacoma area — so there are really a lot of unknowns right now.

“We’ve made arrangements with some customers to pay us out-of-route miles to take that route,” Card said. “Some customers are saying, ‘Hold off; we’re not going to ship,’ or ‘We’ll ship, but just sit tight and don’t move.’ Both of those scenarios are costing us money. It’s a major problem for us.”

Card told Transport Topics on Dec. 5 that the closure already had affected 50 to 100 loads and that 20 to 30 trucks had taken the detour.

Larry Bauman, vice president of Jubitz Corp., which owns Portland’s Jubitz Travel Center, said Dec. 5 that, while the parking lot of the rest area was filled with trucks, he’s also heard that many drivers were attempting to detour.

“The parking lots are full out here, but trucks are rerouting themselves around, up through central Washington. It’s affecting everything,” Bauman said. “I hope the water recedes, or we’ll have to start building arks.”

Vander Pol said the 175-mile trip between Seattle and Portland is now a 350-mile trip. “And WashDOT is telling people to take a 440-mile trip. There is a shorter way and most of the trucking companies are using the shorter route,” he said.

“The shorter road puts you on a two-lane road over a 3,000-foot overpass, but professional truck drivers do that every day.”

On Dec. 5, however, the state DOT and state police decided to allow some trucks to use State Route 7 to bypass I-5 in Chehalis on a case-by-case basis. The route, which is a much shorter detour than their 440-mile recommended alternate, was limited primarily to trucks carrying food, fuel, medical goods and supplies for disaster relief.

Even with such temporary easements without full use of I-5, carriers said the financial ramifications of the closing would have long-term effects.

“You can’t make up what you use in loss of productivity,” said Card. “You can never make up fixed costs. We don’t have fuel costs if we’re sitting for a week, but wages continue, maintenance continues, and our drivers get frustrated and we have to find a way to pay these guys to sit there.”

Dan Gatchet, president of West Coast Trucking in Seattle, told The Seattle Times that the detour was costing his company $700 to $800 per run.

He said the fleet was absorbing the costs in the first few days of the closure, “but if this goes much beyond . . . [Dec. 6], we’re going to have to sit down with customers and have a very hard conversation. We’ll have to try to recover those marginal costs.”