Winter Arrives...

...and where better to find it than in Pennsylvania...

The first trip of the month started out like any other trip... I left home later than I should have.  This is a very bad habit of mine....  I was to pick up my truck and an empty trailer in Council Bluffs, IA and run the empty back over to (my hometown of) Des Moines, IA.  In Des Moines there was a load waiting for me going to Elizabeth, NJ for Monday at 7:AM.  I didn't get to Des Moines, IA until nearly 8:00 PM Saturday night.  I'd watched the weather and it appeared that the east was going to stay mild and dry.  Yeah, right.

I knew I had better stay in the seat or I would be in trouble time wise.  I made it to Porter, IN by the wee hours of the morning and crashed.  They had recently had some snow but it didn't look too major and I figured that by the time I got going again, it would be quite a ways ahead of me.  I got up pretty early the next morning and made a resolve to stay with the program that day.  I had screwed myself up by leaving so late and I wasn't about to be late to delivery.

I actually made it 472 miles before stopping again.  I usually can't go this far without at least a pit stop... or should I say, my kidneys demand the pit stops.  Sometime around 5PM I pulled into Brookville, PA with the intention of getting supper and a shower.  The plan was to then go a bit farther east before sleeping.  (The idea being to max out my available hours to drive.)

I had supper and was approaching the desk where you get your shower key when I overheard the clerk talking to a driver and heard the words, "closed, wreck, trucks."   I apologized for eavesdropping and asked them if, by chance, they were referring to I-80 and unfortunately, the answer was yes.  Apparently there had been a big crash on I-80 in the vicinity of Snowshoe, PA.  (Approximately 70 miles east of where I was.)  Just about every driver I talked to described what had happened differently.  It is ridiculous how people turn things around like they do.  Initially I was told this wreck was a 12 truck pileup.  I didn't really believe that -- and contributed it to exaggeration. 

I found out later (after getting home and doing an Internet search) what had really happened. 

(Source:  Centre Daily Times, State College, PA)

Around 3:00 PM a Penske truck and trailer were headed eastbound on I-80 when the driver hit the brakes and slid out sideways.  (The article doesn't clearly indicate if this was a tractor/trailer or not.)  It was then hit by a tractor trailer. The trailer jackknifed and came to rest on the exit 158 off ramp.  As the Penske truck was stopping along the guard rail in the passing lane, a vehicle smashed into the Penske trailer.  Another tractor trailer then struck the vehicle that had run into the Penske trailer.  Shortly after this crash, three more vehicles crashed near the same spot.  One New Mexico driver flipped his vehicle as he tried to drive past the wreck.  Two more vehicles collided with each other in an attempt to get around the flipped vehicle.  No fatalities were reported but there were several injuries.

Not exactly a 12 truck pileup, but bad enough.  Anyway, my hard work getting caught up was for naught.  I waited and waited for the road to open but from what was being said, the road wasn't in the greatest shape anyway.  Road reports from drivers were terrible, but that is not unusual.  I've never figured out why drivers so often exaggerate road conditions.  All I've come up with is:

• They think it makes them look cool to have come through such horrible conditions.

• They like to scare people.

• They have a different idea of what "bad" is than I do.

• Their road report is too old.  (If you get a road report about how the road was 75 miles behind a driver, you have to know that it is already hours old and by the time you get there, it is a couple more hours old.)

Lots of drivers were stranded in Brookville, PA, Hazelwood, PA and surrounding areas that night.  Many of us had Monday morning appointments somewhere on the east coast.  Many drivers gave up and decided that even if the road opened that it was still too nasty to risk it.  I called dispatch and told them about the road closure because it was looking like I wouldn't make my appointment.  My dispatcher said I was the 13th driver to call in about it.

I was 350 miles out and it was getting late.  If I left right away and drove until the sun came up, I could make it.  According to the drivers in the telephone room, the road was still closed.  I decided to call the state cops myself.  They said the road was open.  I called the Pennsylvania weather information line and it said only that the road was wet.  My conscience got the better of me -- over my common sense -- and I decided to go on.  I reasoned with myself, for what had to be the millionth time, that if it got bad, I would stop even if it meant I'd be late..... 'cuz it's always better late than never, right?

Well, that's all good and well but this is a flawed theory.  I really should know that by now.  The problem with it is that when it "gets bad," there is never a place to simply pull over.  You can't pull over on the side of the road -- too dangerous -- and the off ramps are death traps because if the big road is bad, the ramps are worse. 

For quite awhile, the road was indeed only wet, but there was very little traffic and I was a bit unnerved by this.  I-80 in Pennsylvania normally has very heavy truck traffic at all times of day and night.  About a mile or so in front of me were a couple of trucks and cars.  One truck was moving very, very slowly.  The traffic was working on getting around him.  I was hanging back until all of them got done with their passing and because it seemed I was running up on them too fast.  There were at least several sets of truck headlights a mile or two behind me.  About this time, somewhere around the 190 mile marker, all bets were off, the die was cast and the joys of winter driving were plentiful.  The slow truck in front of me was on glare ice.  He was also on his brakes.  I admit it, I started to sweat.  Brakes + Ice = Disaster.  I had the advantage in that I had begun to slow early.  He was, however, forcing me to get on my brakes and I desperately did not want to do that.  The passing lane had not seen a plow so it had a lot of snow on it -- providing traction -- but underneath it was the same glare ice as well as a whole lot of choppy ice.  By now the trucks from behind me had caught up and the one immediately behind asked if I would like to come over.  It was a "do or die" moment.  I had to decide if I wanted to deal with the extremely rough passing lane or the slow truck and glare ice.... I moved over.  It was rougher than it looked.  The traction was better but it was so incredibly choppy that you had to really hang on.  I just wanted away from the slow truck.  There really is such a thing as "too slow".  As I rode it out, I must have said, "I will not run off the road, I will not run off the road," out loud a hundred times. 

I don't know how many miles of that crappy road there were -- it felt like a million.  I decided I was bailing out of the horse and pony show at Milton, PA, mile marker 215.  I'd made it an entire 136 miles. 

As is usually the case, everyone else had decided Milton was a good place to bail, too.  The off ramp was as icy as it could possibly be.  A truck was stuck on the street that runs in front of the Petro truck stop.  Trucks were lined up out the driveway and into the road.  One truck had broken down in front of one of the parking lots that leads to the fuel area, causing a traffic jam from ***.  Another truck was stuck going up a hill that leads to another parking area.  There were no parking places to be had.  It was bedlam.  A truck slid down the ramp and crashed into the median, where he became stuck, blocking the trucks behind him.  They were backed up on the icy ramp almost out to the road.  Another truck was stuck climbing the eastbound onramp. 

I was blessed with an incredible amount of good luck just then.  As I was driving through the parking lot, I had to come to a stop to wait for the truck ahead of me, who was waiting for another truck to get backed into a spot.  I had no idea where I'd go.  As I sat there, a driver walking out of the Petro got my attention and said he would be pulling out of his front row parking spot and he'd wait for me to get up there so that I could grab it.  True to his word, he did exactly what he said he would.  Not only did I get a parking spot, but a front row spot at that.  Sometimes life is fair and good.  I went to bed.

I woke up about the time that I was supposed to be delivering in Elizabeth, NJ.  On most mornings at this time, the truckstop would be emptied out.  Not today.  I guess everyone was waiting a little while for things to improve.  I got going and thankfully did not encounter any more bad roads.  I didn't bother calling the Pennsylvania road/weather line since the previous day showed me just how dependable it was.  (NOT)   Dispatch told me the receiver would take it, so I got going.

In Elizabeth, NJ, on the way to the receiver, a lumper tried to get the better of me.  He was motioning like crazy for me to roll down my window and talk to him but I wanted none of it.  I pulled the truck to the side of the road, beside the receiver's place and he was talking crap about how he was trying to help and that if I went the wrong way I'd top my trailer and all of this baloney.  Yeah, okay.  The receiver needed me to go to a different warehouse and gave me directions.  True enough, the directions put me under an underpass marked as 13'6.  I put the four ways on and sat a minute.  After several trucks went under easily (with a foot to spare, it seemed) I went on.  There were a total of 3 underpasses marked as 13'6 but they had to have been over 14 foot.  That's when I knew for positively sure the lumper was full of it. 

The receiver not only took my load, but was actually quite nice about the whole thing.  I ended up being about 5 hours late.  It isn't unusual for a receiver to refuse to unload until the next day when a driver is as late as I was, but they put me right in a dock door.  The receiving clerk even smiled at me when he checked me in.  I appreciate that, Papetti's.

I was out of there about 3 - 4 hours later.. just in time for rush hour.  Traffic was busy, of course, but a truck crash resulted in a four hour wait sitting in traffic.

By the time I reached exit 7 on I-78, I just wanted running water, a hot dog and a Mountain Dew.  Such simple things.... but it wasn't simple.  When the traffic from the crash had finally let loose, a gazillion trucks made for the same truck stop.  We all arrived about the same time.  We all wanted the same simple things.  The parking lot had not seen salt nor sand and was very, very slick.  I was empty and got a little stuck more than once.  It took over an hour to pull in the truckstop and get back out the other side.  I made it to exit 3 on I-78 and called it a heck of a day.

Early the next morning I loaded in Womelsdorf, PA.  Imagine my surprise when the shipper immediately gave me a dock door, loaded me fast and was very nice.  If all shippers and receivers were like the ones I'd dealt with in the past two days, trucking would be so much more pleasant.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, thankfully.  I did see some evidence of the damage from Sunday night being pulled from ditches across Pennsylvania.

My new load delivered in LeMars, IA on Thursday morning.  It was a fairly tough run to get there on time.  Unloading only took about an hour and then I was off to Dakota City, NE to wait on a meat load.  I said to heck with it and got a motel room.  Except for the meat plant, I had great shippers & receivers this week.  I wish all weeks were like that!