Brian Morrissey had a job to do.
The 62-year-old trucker was supposed to be on the road Thursday, driving a load of Fred Meyer merchandise south on I-5 to Oregon.
Instead, Morrissey was stuck. His semi truck was empty. He figured he’d be losing $300 to $400 each day he couldn’t rev up his engine and go.
Morrissey and dozens of other truckers were spending hour after soggy hour at Donna’s Travel Plaza. Lined up side-by-side Thursday morning, almost 50 rigs crowded the parking lot of the truck stop on 116th Street NE near Marysville.
Big diesels were idling, but trucks weren’t going anywhere. At midday Thursday, all lanes of I-5 were closed in Lewis County with no viable detour.
Mountain passes to Eastern Washington, including the major I-90 lifeline, were shut down because of avalanche danger, flooding and slides. By late Thursday afternoon the State Department of Transportation reported that U.S. 2 had reopened over Stevens Pass.
When I talked with Morrissey and other truckers at Donna’s on Thursday morning, they were all hostages of high water and wicked weather.
Wayne Hyatt, 51, was making the best of it. Ignoring steady rain, the driver from Wenatchee left the comforts of his Peterbilt cab to play a fetch game in the parking lot with Taz, his Jack Russell terrier.
By Hyatt’s estimate, Taz logs about 135,000 miles each year asleep in the passenger seat or riding along on his lap. A rare morning spent running and catching Hyatt’s baseball cap was no hardship for the dog.
Hyatt just returned from California. After hauling a load of apples south and making it back up I-5 with tomatoes he delivered in Portland, Ore.; Puyallup; and Everett, he was stranded without a load. He had lots of company.
Texas, Missouri, California, Indiana, Oregon, Oklahoma — the license plates on the parked behemoths were signs of the long distances they’d come.
Todd Ketchum, 49, of Springfield, Ore., was supposed to be delivering glass from Canada to Stockton, Calif. He was also supposed to be earning $700 for the day-and-a-half run. “That ain’t happening,” he said. “And I was hoping to be home in Springfield.”
Instead, he was planning to spend the night in the sleeper of his big Kenworth, which he drives for Sherman Bros. Trucking. When flooding closed I-5 at Chehalis in December 2007, Ketchum said drivers had a 440-mile detour as an option. “Last year we could go up and over I-90, down through Yakima, and the Tri-Cities, then on (Oregon’s) I-84 to Portland,” he said. The long haul kept cargo moving.
Even before the current road closures, this has been a horrible winter for truckers.
Tom Kelley hauls a load of sheetrock each day from Rainier, Ore., to Surrey, B.C. “I unloaded in Canada last night. We’re kind of boxed in,” he said early Thursday.
During snowstorms in Portland, Ore., before Christmas, Kelley had to chain up, or “hang iron” as he calls it. “It takes two hours to hang my iron. It was snow, then frozen rain, then snow on top of that,” said Kelley, 57, who lives in Oregon.
“I try not to come up here if I can help it,” said Frank Anderson, 58, who drives with his wife, Shandalee. “I try to stay in the southern part of the country. You don’t have to deal with ice and snow.”
The couple lived in Florida and ran a remodeling business before Anderson bought his used Peterbilt for $40,000. “The housing market went to hell, so we bought ourselves a job — for the time being,” he said.
In the past year, Anderson has paid as much as $5.25 per gallon for diesel. Now that prices are down, truckers aren’t adding fuel surcharges to their customers’ costs.
An ailing economy makes it harder for truckers to find work, he said. “There are probably 10 available trucks for every load,” Anderson said.
“If I could do something else, I would,” he said. Still, “it’s a fun life. I’d rather be driving than sitting.”
In the cafe at Donna’s, Morrissey had time for a leisurely breakfast, complete with hash browns and conversation. “Breakfast is the most important meal,” said Morrissey, who comes from Connecticut but makes his home in the truck.
In his cab, he planned to spend the day watching movies on a DVD player. His favorites are action, sci-fi and all John Wayne films.
Even when weather shuts the roads, “it’s a 365-day, 24-hour business,” Morrissey said. “It’s a hard life, but where else do you get paid to drive around and see the countryside?”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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