Truckers frosted by ice shipments

PORTLAND – Trucks loaded with millions of pounds of bagged ice destined for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast have been diverted hundreds of miles to cold storage facilities in New England and elsewhere around the country.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered the ice delivered to staging areas in the South to help in hurricane relief efforts. But the agency ended up with more ice than it could use, forcing it to direct the trucks to freezers nationwide.

Some truckers who were waiting to unload their rigs at an AmeriCold Logistics warehouse in Portland on Tuesday said diverting the ice some 1,300 miles from Alabama to Maine seems like a waste of money.

“This is a bad use of taxpayers’ money to do this. Why send it here?” said Ricky Gosnell, a truck driver from Greenville, S.C.

As part of its response to Hurricane Katrina, FEMA ordered 180 million pounds of ice to be delivered to staging areas in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, according to spokeswoman Debbie Wing.

Hundreds of tractor-trailers from all parts of the country made their way South in recent weeks to deliver the ice.

But when it became apparent that it had more ice than needed, FEMA directed many trucks to strategic locations along the East Coast so they would be ready with ice and water in case Hurricane Ophelia, which passed by the Eastern Seaboard last week, caused widespread damage.

Meanwhile, hundreds of other trucks were sent to cold storage facilities across the country where the ice would be available if needed in the future, Wing said.

“We don’t waste commodities,” she said. “We store it for future needs for future disasters.”

Gosnell, who has driven trucks for 30 years, loaded his truck in South Carolina with 46,000 pounds of ice on Sept. 10 and drove 550 miles to Selma, Ala. Hundreds of other trucks were there with ice, food and supplies of all kinds, he said.

Gosnell spent a week in Selma before he and more than 200 other truckers were directed to drive their loads to Maine, he said. Other drivers were told to take their loads to other facilities around the country, he said.

The drivers get paid $2.50 a mile while driving, and $800 to $1,000 a day while waiting at a location, said Gosnell. He questioned whether FEMA could have found a location closer to Alabama.

“I’m sure they could’ve found some place to store it down there,” he said.

Jeff Campbell, a truck driver from Rockingham, N.C., said he figured it is costing more than $5,000 per truck – or more than $1 million overall – to send the ice-loaded trucks to Maine. Each truck typically carries 40,000 to 46,000 pounds, he said, meaning the total weight would be more than 8 million pounds.

But he said it’s hard to put a price tag on ice in times of need.

“If there’s a disaster and you don’t have any ice, then ice is invaluable,” he said.

Truckers were showing up at other ice plants around the country with similar stories of driving their ice-filled trucks hundreds of miles.

In Gloucester, Mass., Paul Kite told the Gloucester Daily Times that he picked up ice in Newburgh, N.Y., on Sept. 2, and drove to Carthage, Miss. He then was directed to Alabama and then to Gloucester, where he arrived 17 days after his journey began.

Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., was the co-sponsor of a bill introduced last week that would establish a congressional committee to study how American tax dollars are being spent for relief and reconstruction efforts following Katrina. He said having hundreds of ice-filled trucks crisscrossing the country in apparent haphazard fashion doesn’t look like an efficient use of resources.

“My reaction was this is exactly what shouldn’t be going on,” Tierney said. “With good oversight we can stop this kind of thing from happening, and we can do it now so it doesn’t become an ongoing scenario.”

Gosnell said this isn’t the first time he’s responded to a hurricane disaster and found out there was no need for what he was carrying. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, he drove to south Florida with a truckload of bottled water.

“But they couldn’t find anybody that wanted it,” he said. “So me and about 50 other truckers backed into a field and we dumped it all out.”