Just about everyone from political elites to dump truck drivers in the Southeast can agree on one thing: A change is coming, and it’s coming in the wind. Call it climate change, call it an act of God, call it whatever you want, but those winds have been blowing for some time, and extreme weather events pile up with increasing frequency and intensity. Owner-ops face it down on the open road -- or even at home.
Out West, the pace and scope of wildfires has increased, Texas froze over in 2021, snow and ice completely shut down I-95 in Virginia for more than a day in January, and heavy fog has caused pile-ups across the country.
Headline-inducing events are head-turning, of course, but in some senses the new routine is the same as the old. As any over-the-road professional well knows, weather's always a day-to-day consideration. Yet there's new urgency to route planning.
Take the month of April, for example: 2022 saw the windiest April in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and also in Midland, Texas, and also in Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, South Dakota, and just about everywhere else.
Chuck Winborn, a Birmingham, Alabama-based owner-operator, absolutely rejects the popular notion of climate change, but nonetheless, his business hauling asphalt for interstate paving means he’s extremely tuned in to the wind, with a "a 35-foot frameless trailer," he said. "And if I raise it, it’s an aluminum trailer, and the wind is gusting... A frameless trailer doesn’t have a whole lot of integrity once you get it in the air. The word is that it’s not if, but when you’re gonna turn a trailer over.”
Not that he's hit that when just yet. “In five years I’ve never turned one over.”
“I’m really cautious about it. If I turn a trailer over, I can’t just go find another. I've got to go to the shop and get it repaired,” he said, referencing ongoing trailer equipment shortages.
