Historic Floods Leave Cross-Country Drivers Searching For New Routes

With miles of Interstate 44 closed down because of flooding in west St. Louis County, a monkey wrench has been thrown into the work days of thousands of cross-country truckers.

I-44 is a major cross-country shipping route, traveled by tens-of-thousands of truckers every day. And, with 26 miles shut down in the St. Louis suburbs, at least until Friday, there could be delays in all sorts of deliveries.

Major flooding in St. Louis has thrown up a roadblock and slowed cross-country truck traffic on I-44 almost to a standstill, causing huge traffic jams on the highways that are still open there, like I-55.

Truck driver Steve Condreay said, "Find a different way, that's part of your job. If you have freight that has to go, you have to find a way around it."

Condreay hasn't made it to Missouri this week but has faced similar weather before. He said, for every day a driver sits idle they lose $200 to $300 since many company drivers are paid by the mile.

That’s why he wants to keep moving.

"What are you gonna do? You can't tell it not to rain," he said.

“This is a historic flood from what they are telling us,” said Melton Truck Lines’ Vice President of Operations, Russ Elliot.

Severe weather of any kind is serious business for those who make their living on the road.

Melton has dispatchers whose job it is to monitor the weather and looks for alternate routes. In some cases, the way around it can be a long one - several hundred miles.

Through Missouri, it’s meant detouring through small towns on small roads.

“It is a very widespread area - all the tributaries, all the small rivers are flowing into the big ones, so this is a situation that isn't going to go away really quickly," Elliot said.

He said a couple of his drivers are dealing with the flooding in Missouri.

If another route can't be found, they let the driver decide what they want to do next.

"What we do with our drivers, they are all professionally trained and they really are the captain of the ship, if you will, and we instruct them if they are in any conditions that they deem to be unsafe they need to get off the road," Elliot said.

If there’s a silver lining to any of this, Melton said the week after Christmas is traditionally a slow one for them.

They’re just hoping the water recedes quickly, so that the traffic troubles don’t have a ripple effect on deliveries that stretch into the New Year.