Highway closures cripple cross-state commerce

YAKIMA, Wash. - The closures of highways linking the Yakima Valley to the greater Puget Sound area have affected everything from local grocery stores to truck repair shops to the ag industry.

"This whole weather situation is probably costing our businesses millions of dollars in lost time or missed connections," said Dave McFadden, president of the Yakima County Development Association, also known as New Vision.

State fruit shippers certainly have felt it. They lost out on lucrative sales of apples to Taiwan in advance of the Chinese New Year celebration, a $25 million business. Trucks carrying cartons of Fuji apples for shipment couldn't get through to Seattle, said Keith Mathews, executive director of the Yakima Valley Growers-Shippers Association.

"The difficult part is it's a select grade and weight of box that doesn't have applicability in other markets," he said. "The concern is we have packed a fair amount of fruit that doesn't fit anywhere else. We missed the business."

Truck repair jobs at Western Peterbilt in Union Gap are two days behind because mechanics can't get the necessary parts, said Todd Harris, parts manager at Western Peterbilt.

Some parts come from Chicago and Portland, but about 90 percent the truck dealership and repair shop stocks is from a Renton warehouse.

"We're been trying to reroute, but sometimes that is not possible," Harris said.

The closures has created a level of unpredictability for Associated Freight Brokers in Yakima.

It's difficult to respond to a customer's request when there's no certainty of when the pass or the interstate will open, said James Ward, a broker with the company which trucks produce to and from all points of the country.

And they are no trucks available because most are stuck empty in Seattle or are full of produce here, he said.

"We're paid basically to move freight," Ward said. "If we can't move it, we're not making any money."

Meanwhile other businesses are making do.

Top Food & Drug and all the Safeway stores get their products from a warehouses in the westside of the state. But both say the closures haven't created any major shortages at this point.

"The consumer will probably not notice a whole lot," said Becky Skaggs, spokeswoman for Haggen Co., the Bellingham-based firm that owns Top Food & Drug in Yakima. "Their variety may be out, but they can still get a loaf of bread."

Other area supermarkets, including Grocery Outlet, Albertsons and Rosauers, receive a large portion of their produce and dry goods from more accessible parts of the state and region, and did not have any problem stocking goods at stores in the Yakima Valley.

Adam Dolsen of the Dolsen Companies, which distributes Coca-Cola around Yakima Valley, said the company has had some trouble getting product into its Yakima warehouse.

For example, when Snoqualmie Pass was closed for a time last week due to avalanches, the company ran out of 2 liter bottles of Coke.

"We didn't get any in for two days," Dolsen said.

But much of the company's inventory comes from Boise, he said, which provides some protection against weather-related problems in the Puget Sound.

A Darigold spokeswoman said deliveries to the west side have stopped from its Sunnyside processing plant. But so far, most Yakima Valley dairies have been able to store what milk the cooperative can't pick up, said Michelle Carter, a Darigold spokeswoman in Seattle.

Cheese products are easily stored at the plant, she said.

It's a different story in Lewis County, where the cooperative can't get to its member farms because of flooding and the closure of Interstate 5. If the problem continues, it will be a big problem for west side dairies, she said.

"We don't know what tomorrow is going to bring," Carter said.

Interstate 90's Snoqualmie Pass has been closed since early this week and it remains unclear when it will reopen. Alternatives routes to the greater Seattle area, such as U.S. Highways 12 and 97, depend on parts of Interstate 5, which are now closed and underwater.

Most businesses can do little more than wait.

Ken Marble, president of Horizon Distribution Inc., a Yakima distribution company that ships a variety of products to farm stores, hardware stores and industrial plants, hopes he won't have to wait much longer.

"If it's going beyond a week we would feel the pinch of running out of product," he said.

* Reporter Leah Beth Ward contributed to this story.

* Mai Hoang can be reached at 577-7685 or mhoang@yakimaherald.com.

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