The power of the wind…

Makes these big trucks find a place to hole up.

About 15 miles west of Flagstaff we saw trucks parked on the shoulder of the roads and both sides of the highway on ramps.  This was April 16th around 1 p.m.  The highway was going to be shut down until 7 p.m. to all traffic going east and west on I-40.  The winds and blowing dust were so bad that visibility was less than 1/4 mile.  Joe and I decided to call it a day in Flagstaff and wait it out until the next day.

We had picked up trucks in French Camp, California bound for Dallas, Texas and had been hearing about wind and dust storms ahead of us.  We had been fighting the gusts in California and Nevada.  The winds eased up a bit entering Arizona but not by much.  Looking at the Weather Channel app on my phone I saw “Severe Weather Alerts” for the Flagstaff area of strong winds gusting to 65 miles per hour.  We later learned that 33 miles of I-40 were closed down in both directions from Twin Arrows, Arizona to Winslow, Arizona.

The drivers of these trucks, idling or shut down on the roadway, take this weather event seriously….as did the Highway Department of Arizona closing the roads.  Straight line winds can blow semi trucks over.  The empty trailers are more vulnerable to this because of the lack of weight and a broad surface for the winds to push against.  Fully loaded trucks are not immune to being toppled either.  Watch this video to see what happens to a truck in these high winds.  This is an old video and takes place in Nevada but the result is the same had the roads in Arizona been left open.

The ramifications of this kind of an “accident” are many.

• First the driver will be cited, or ticketed, for unsafe driving because he/she did not find a place to wait out the weather.
• Second, the driver will be sent to the hospital by ambulance to have wounds and broken bones tended.
• Third, there will be two to three tow trucks brought to the accident site – after the winds die down – to right the truck and trailer.  Each tow truck will have a minimum charge of $100 per hour and the clock starts ticking the minute the driver gets in the tow truck at the shop before getting to the accident site.
• Fourth, the roads will be shut down or traffic diverted while the tow trucks do their work in getting the truck and trailer upright.  The state can send a bill to the trucking company for the amount of time the highway is blocked.
• Fifth, the truck and trailer will both be “totaled” by the insurance company.  Frames bent, king pin and fifth wheels will have been stressed to a point of being unfit.
• Sixth, the driver will be unable to work until he/she gets back home to their “truck terminal” or where they are dispatched out of.

The final cost of an accident related to wind gusts can reach $500,000 if the truck and trailer are empty.  The costs can go up into the millions of dollars if the trailer had been loaded with product and THAT brings on a different can of worms.  Bringing another truck and trailer out to the site.  Someone from the company will have to be flown out to look at the product and make decisions.  That person will decide if the contents are salvageable or not.  If not more equipment will be brought to the site.  Forklifts, dump trucks, front end loaders to scoop the detritus into the beds of dump trucks.  The costs add up quickly.

There are some arrogant truck drivers that would fume at the delay and tell everyone that would stand still long enough how he would be able to drive through the winds with not a single problem.  Other drivers would chafe at being delayed for seven hours or more and have to listen to the dispatchers chew their butts.

For the drivers that waited alongside the road, they will get an earful at the delivery point for being late, they are caught between a rock and a hard place.  Damned if they do and damned if they don’t.  We had to listen to the stoney silence and the long exhalation of breath that came from our dispatch office over the delay.  However we were calmly told to wait out the storm and hit the road early the following morning.

This job allows a certain freedom unlike any office or factory job.  The weather and “Mother Nature” have to remind us all who really has the upper hand in this life.  Long ago, when I first was introduced to the truck driving life, one of the mantras spoken over the CB radio to wish a fellow trucker good luck – much like telling an actor to “break a leg” – was “Keep the dirty side down and the shiny side up”.

So to all you “Good buddies” out there stay safe and ever vigilant.

Leslie