WISCONSIN (NBC 26) — After countless hours on the roads, longtime truck drivers have learned how to get from point a to point b even in the dead of winter.
"We read the road, do we see black ice or do we see ice, or the buildup of ice on our windshield", said Jeffrey Beattie, a former truck driver and current in-house trainer for Wel Companies.
Beattie has been in the trucking industry for many years.
"A lot of times when we have time critical freight or freight that needs to get to a customer. It could be for a sale a store is having or we might need to get there. It might be relief supplies", Beattie said.
And one area organization says they've had the weather impact some distributions in the past.
"We give them a beautiful schedule and weather happens, and tires burst, and traffic happens in Chicago, so we do sometimes have to deal with a little bit of flexibility when it comes time for the distributions. A truck may be late, a truck may be early," said Liz Wollenberg, Director of Development for Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin.
The goal of course is for that truck to be right on time.
As the in-house instructor of his company, Beattie uses a simulator to help teach new drivers what conditions may be like.
Beattie says even for experienced drivers like himself this can be a good tool as you never know what you can expect.
"Occasionally you get those times where you think the roads are okay and you get your trailer to kind of jack knife a little bit and you realize woah. It gives you a little shock and a scare and at that point you kind of tell yourself. You have to be safe number one and that's the most important thing. I've had times where a trailer will start to come out from underneath the truck and it's at that time where I think I'm going to shut down a little bit and wait out the storm", Beattie said.
And while truck distributions weren't an issue this time for Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, they did say they had to cancel some food distributions this week as a result of the very cold temperatures.
“The issues that we are running into now coming into this freezing cold time is that we really have to think about everyone else’s safety,” Wollenberg said.
She said it’s not just the safety of their staff and volunteers who have to be outside distributing food for at least three hours, but also all the other factors one might not automatically think of such as those folks who are coming to pick up meals.
“People are sitting out in their cars, if they are having car issues. These are dangerous temperatures that really have to think about,” Wollenberg said.
She said with this week’s cancellation, while they wished they could find an alternative way to distribute the items, she says it just wasn’t possible with the pandemic we’re currently dealing with.
“So options of bringing things indoors are just not feasible when we have six to seven hundred cars showing up to these distributions when they’re outdoors. So for the safety of everyone involved looking at the forecast for this week we had to make the difficult decision to cancel our distributions this week,” Wollenberg said.
While they did cancel their scheduled distributions for the weeks, she says their organizations still found ways to distribute what they did receive.
“We brought them into other community agencies like the Boys and Girls Clubs or some other food pantry members to try and still get that food out to where it needs to go,” Wollenberg said.
She went on to say that for those who are still in need of resources, help is still very much available.
“If people are in need of food right now the best way to get in touch with resources in your area is to call 211. Just pick up the phone, 211, they can help you with food, with housing, with any resources that you are looking for right now,” Wollenberg said.
Distributions are still scheduled for the rest of February with plans to continue back up next week, but say they will be monitoring weather conditions as well.
“Couple weeks prior we actually set a limit for what the wind chill would be for us to make this cancellation decision and that was based on how quickly you could be harmed by the weather being outside and if the weather got to that temperature we were going to have to cancel,” Wollenberg said.
The organization said they will be posting their most up-to date information on their social media platforms and website in case anything does have to change.
