Iowa Blizzard

Well that was a fun trip...not!!

I sat most of the day Wednesday because I-80 west bound was closed between Iowa City and Des Moines, IA. Seems a set of doubles had jack knifed and blocked the road at the 175 mile marker. Couple of other trucks too. The winds were blowing at up to 30 mph with gusts to 60 mph in places. That is not fun when you have a light load or are running empty. A van trailer like I have acts like a sail on a boat and if you are sitting on ice you are like a feather on the wind on Forest Gump...you go where it blows you. I had 45,000 pounds on my trailer and on slick roads, heavier is better.

I had contacted dispatch and told them the road was blocked and was waiting. I was getting the information off of the computer where Iowa has a 511 site. This is supposed to be a nationwide emergency road system that is put up by each state. Most of the states where you have snow areas have the system in place. If they would update it now and then it would work better. I combine that with checking with drivers going east on the conditions. You have to learn to read those reports because there are many drivers on the road today that are not very professional. They like to give false reports just to mess with the minds of rookie drivers. Over the years I have come to be pretty good in weeding out phony reports. I have complete confidence in my driving abilities in any conditions. What you cannot predict is what others do around you, because quite frankly, most of them have no ability at all.

So in watching the 511 site all day it kept saying I-80 was closed, talking to drivers coming east I learned it was open and had been since noon. It just took them until 3pm to get to where I was in Atalissa, IA. At 3:30pm I left headed west. Blizzard conditions were still going on with the high winds and blowing snow. Temperatures were dropping and down to 10 degrees. Near Iowa City I put myself in a bad situation by not letting off the accelerator soon enough. Braking you don't do on ice. Was following a truck in front of me and keeping around 10 seconds of following distance. Coming into Iowa City we were going up an incline. I was watching traffic coming up on my left side because you have to watch everyone who gets close to you. More on that later. When I looked back to the front the truck in front of me had slowed dramatically going up the incline and had never touched his brakes. Touching my brakes it just slid so let off and steered to the shoulder because 2 cars were in the left lane and coming up on me quick. If I had pulled left they wouldn't have been able to stop and would have been in it too. Had to steer gently to keep from jack knifing and just missed the right rear of the trailer in front of me by inches. Thank God the shoulder was clear, I just kept going up the shoulder because if I had stopped going up the hill on that ice I couldn't get going again. The truck that was causing the problem in front of the one in front of me was only doing about 5 mph. I had to pass 2 trucks and a car in between them and pulled back in to the right lane in front of them. Telling them while I was passing on the right what I was doing. That came out all right no accidents caused.

Further toward Des Moines I had stopped to get fuel and pulled back out on the road going west again. It was dark and about 7 pm. Roads were ice covered but the winds had finally died down and could see. I was going down a hill about 30 mph and a couple of cars came by me on my left side. The last one, a large Continental, lost it a couple of hundred feet after he got by me. He started doing 360's in front of me. It reminded me of a NASCAR race. Here I'm going down an icy hill trying to slow down and he is sliding sideways in my lane, I was getting ready to wake up Leroy. As the joke goes, because he has never seen an accident like this before...

Well again, there was another car on my left side which limited my choices. Right at the last moment that car on my left cleared me and he had enough sense to keep going on past the sliding guy, I started gradually steering left and finally just before I got to this guy he slid off into the right hand ditch. What I mean, you can't protect yourself against the stupidity of others when your outs are limited. You have to work constantly to keep as many outs around you as possible whether you need them at the moment or not.

I finally made it to Des Moines and out the other side. You find in conditions such as this that they pull the snow plows off the highway, because as soon as they pass an area the winds cover it back up again. In a populated area it is a losing battle because the larger than normal traffic packs the snow into an icy glaze that takes time to remove. Once I got 20 miles out west of Des Moines the roads cleared off and had smooth sailing to Council Bluffs, IA across the river from Omaha.

I went to our terminal there and let dispatch know I got there and didn't have enough time to take my 10 hour break and make the 7am appointment Thursday morning. They let me drop it and would try to get another driver to deliver it next morning. Well my night wasn't over because once I dropped that trailer and pulled out I got stuck. A bobtail tractor gets stuck on ice every time and their parking lot was full of snow and ice. They had over 12" that day and hadn't gotten it removed yet. I had tried to back into a spot where a trailer had been parked all day. It was dry there but blowing snow had left a drift on each side of the space. I had backed up against the drift which was about 12" of loose snow. There was a slight ridge in the ice in front of me and I was blocked front and back. I had to get out and hack the ice with a crow bar and scoop out with my hands in front and back of all 10 tires. I did this continually and rocked the truck back and forth until I finally started moving a few inches after each hack job.

Took me close to 1 hour to get moved over to another area out of the drive. The temperature was down to -1 degree and was glad the wind had stopped blowing. Next morning they had given the load to another driver, but he was stuck in front of the trailer I had dropped. Dispatch sent me a note to get back on the load and deliver it because this driver was stuck. Well until he got unstuck I couldn't get to the trailer. Shop workers came in and got him moved with shovels and cat litter. I drove over to the trailer and went past it up the hill. I put it in reverse and started backing down to it blowing my horn. Bouncing over the snow ridges and right up under the trailer.

Well I delivered the load 2 hours late but I got it there. They gave me a load from Omaha to Chicago. Had to go back across I-80. The only place I had a problem was getting back through Des Moines which was still icy. They had 10+ car pile up coming into town that closed the freeway and had to wait about 1 hour for them to push the cars off into the ditch. They don't tow in weather like that. They let all the ice melt before they start towing. Tow truck drivers were going to get rich as soon as they let them out there. Lost count of the number of semis and cars off the road.

I delivered to downtown Chicago area Friday morning and then picked up a load of T-posts in the area going to Oklahoma for Monday. Stopped at our terminal in Ottawa, IL on the way out and they serviced my truck Friday night. Made it to Muskogee, OK Saturday night and will set here until Monday morning.