(The following appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on February 10, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Winter storms Wednesday stopped or slowed freight traffic and closed facilities from the Great Lakes to the East Coast.
An expansive area of wintry precipitation is “moving from the Mississippi River Valley into the Midwest and toward the Mid-Atlantic,” said the National Weather Service. “Widespread heavy snows are likely over the next few days from the Great Lakes, upper Ohio Valley, central Appalachians, northern Mid-Atlantic, and into the New York City metro area/southern New England region.”
Due to weather, the New York Container Terminal will close Wednesday. Inbound gates will close at 10 a.m. Outbound gates close at 10:30 a.m.
New Jersey container terminals were still working, slowly, Wednesday morning. NYCT tends to close early in these situations because most of their trucks have to cross the Goethals Bridge.
A big storm swept through the Midwest Tuesday causing road, rail and barge problems. Canadian and U.S. icebreaking was taking place yesterday on St. Clair River to open up a navigation channel for a Great Lakes port.
The two big eastern railroads – CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway – said their train moves in the storm zones were delayed for many hours as they first dug out from the giant snowfalls of Feb. 6 and then were buried again with the second storm Feb. 9-10. Both carriers invoked force majeure clauses on some traffic for events outside their control, thereby lifting normal delivery guarantees to customers.
High wind and blizzard warnings are in effect across much of the eastern United States.
With whiteout blizzard conditions making roads impassable in many areas of the Mid-Atlantic, trucking companies are closing terminals, parking trucks and delaying shipments.
Hazardous driving conditions and abandoned vehicles on many roads in and around the nation’s capital led UPS Freight to close its Washington hub two days in a row.
The less-than-truckload carrier’s mini-hubs in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and York, Pa., were closed Tuesday night. Those closings affected freight flow and operations to the south, shutting down UPS Freight’s mini-hub in its hometown of Richmond, Va.
Southern freight traffic was rerouted to facilities in Greensboro, N.C., and Gaffney, S.C.
In the Midwest, poor conditions forced UPS Freight to pull drivers off the road, affecting service from terminals in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.
UPS package service is disrupted in areas of Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, with no pickups or deliveries in many areas.
Three ships due to arrive at the port of Baltimore today were turned back to Chesapeake anchorages by bad visibility, according to the Baltimore Maritime Exchange. The state told all its employees to stay home, and that included workers at the Dundalk and Seagirt container terminals. Private terminals are telling employees to report for work if they can. No terminal is accepting cargo. Outside the gates, streets are in poor condition. The city has some 35 inches of snow from the weekend storm, with another 4 to 10 inches today.
Pittsburgh-based regional LTL carrier Pitt Ohio Express said it is not operating trucking in Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. “Shipments picked up today destined for these markets will be delayed,” the company said on its Web site.
Wilson Trucking, an Southeastern LTL carrier with headquarteres in Fishersville, Va., suspended operations at several sites in the Baltimore-Washington area, including its terminal in Winchester, Va. Its operations in Fishersville were severely limited Wednesday. Further south, it said customers in the Roanoke area might experience only minor interruptions in service. It provided links to contacts at each terminal on its Web site.
The Maryland Department of Transportation reports whiteout conditions on state roads, said spokesman Charlie Gischlar. Motorists are being urged to stay off the road, and most are heeding the warning. That includes truckers, although MDOT has had scattered reports of disabled trucks.
(Peter Leach, William B. Cassidy, John D. Boyd, Joseph Bonney and R.G. Edmonson all contributed to this story.)