Winter Storm Snarls Freight Across Southeastern States

This story appears in the Feb. 3 print edition of Transport Topics.

This winter’s wild weather continued last week, as a snow and ice storm paralyzed travel across the Southeast from the Gulf Coast to Virginia, stranding thousands of vehicles on roadways and halting freight movement as well as operations at ports.

The Jan. 28 storm wreaked havoc on interstates in several states, including Alabama and Georgia, and some government officials came under criticism for dismissing workers and students simultaneously, which led to clogged roads with vehicles trapped in the ice.

Wayne Watkins, president of flatbed carrier Watkins Trucking Co. in Birmingham, Ala., said there were “thousands of abandoned cars and trucks” across the South.

“In Birmingham, Atlanta and New Orleans, nobody has any snow equipment. The only thing they use is sand. There’s no brine or anything to put on the roads,” Watkins said.

Package carriers UPS Inc., which is based in Atlanta, and Memphis, Tenn.-based FedEx Corp. put out service advisories last week that deliveries would be delayed in the affected states.

“For the most part, pickup and deliveries were suspended across the Southeast,” UPS spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg said. “The big issue here is the interstates were horrible; they were literally parking lots.”

She said UPS — which has its own meteorology center in Louisville, Ky. — moved drivers out of harm’s way in advance.

Georgia Motor Trucking Association President Ed Crowell said member carriers also rerouted drivers, saying that was the “unsung part of the story. It could have been much worse.”

He added: “Truckers are doing what they need to do to get the job done safely.”

The storm also idled traffic at several major Southeast ports. Truck operations were suspended at the Port of New Orleans for a day and a half due to closed regional highways, spokesman Matt Gresham said.

The Port of Virginia and the Port of Charleston, S.C., also were idled for about a day and a half by ice but were able to reopen Jan. 30 when temperatures warmed above freezing, port officials said.

“We advised everyone to stay home,” said Jim Newsome, president of the South Carolina Ports Authority. “I did not want to encourage a bunch of trucks to be out there on the ice; that would not have been a good thing.”

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a directive Jan. 27 in advance of the storm, waiving hours-of-service rules for drivers delivering propane and heating oil in Florida, after a similar notice a week earlier for 10 Southeastern states and Oklahoma. The waivers expire Feb. 11 or until the emergency situation is over.

Mike DelBovo, president of Saddle Creek Transportation, described the situation as “really tough” for the Lakeland, Fla.-based carrier, which has 500 trucks.

Saddle Creek runs day cabs, so it “had to put drivers up in hotels . . . because the roads were just so bad,” he told Transport Topics.

“The challenge is that trying to recover now is going to be extremely difficult. We handle a lot of fresh bakery products [and] a lot of beverages [which] are in high demand during these times,” he said.

In Birmingham, Watkins said when it became apparent that the ice would be severe and crippling, his dispatchers began contacting drivers, telling them not to try to make it back and to stop as soon as conditions became unsafe.

Watkins said he had 10 trucks stuck on Interstate 285 in Atlanta, where the drivers had to sleep on the highway in their cabs.

Chris Shilhanek, director of safety at Con-way Truckload, said that while some carriers have their drivers put chains on in snow, Con-Way’s position is that if conditions are that bad, drivers should pull off the road and wait for them to improve.

Con-way Truckload, part of Con-way Inc., runs about 3,000 tractors.

“We start coaching all our drivers in the fall, reminding them of the winter survival tips, what to carry on the truck — water, flashlights, cold-rated sleeping bags, all those things,” Shilhanek said.

This storm “will have an adverse effect, but in the scheme of things, we don’t have a choice.”