Grapevine Rush Hour Is in Wee Hours of the Morning

Rush hour on the Grapevine comes in the wee hours of the morning as trucks pour over the main artery linking Los Angeles to the Central Valley and San Francisco.

Every night between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m., about 7,000 trucks--half of them going each way--climb through Tejon Pass in the Tehachapi Mountains.

Most of the traffic on this stretch of Interstate 5 is compressed into the early morning so cargo will be on hand for local deliveries during the day.

“You’ve never been over the Grapevine at 3 a.m.?” asks Steve Roth, a driver for Montebello-based Sterling Transit Co. “It’s quite a sight. Sometimes, the trucks are four abreast.” An Associated Press reporter joined Roth on a recent round trip to Bakersfield.

Veteran Driver of Big Rigs

Roth, 38, has been driving big rigs for 15 years. In the early 1980s, as industry deregulation began taking hold, he tried making it as an independent owner-operator, but his costs were too high and delivery rates too low.

So he sold his rig and went to Sterling, a major intrastate hauler whose drivers are Teamsters.

The cab of the International shudders as Roth turns on the diesel engine at the Montebello yard and lumbers over surface streets to Interstate 5. “It settles down as it warms up,” he says.

It takes more than 2 1/2 hours to haul his two trailers of merchandise to Sterling’s terminal in Bakersfield and exchange them for two trailers full of nuts bound for Los Angeles.

Along the way, he talks about truck accidents.

“The worst area is when they go over the hill,” Roth says, referring to the notorious Grapevine grade that takes traffic from the top of the Tejon Pass to the floor of the Central Valley 4,000 feet below. “Some trucks hit the hill at 50 to 60 miles an hour, then they can’t slow down.”

About halfway down the Grapevine is a shiny new road sign that says, “Runaway Truck Ramp.”

“They (the state) put that in just a few months ago,” Roth explains. “It’s really just a big gravel pit. When you hit the gravel, you’ll go about 10 feet, sink down to the trailer and then have to pay about $1,500 to get towed out.”

Roth bristles a bit at California Highway Patrol statistics showing that commercial trucks log about 3.7% of the vehicle miles traveled in California but are involved in about 6.9% of the accidents.

He pins part of the blame on automobile drivers who do things like cut off a truck or slow down in front of one, apparently not cognizant of the danger they are creating for themselves.

A truck hauling two loaded trailers can weigh up to 40 tons. A standard car weighs about a ton and a half.

“If there’s an accident, it isn’t going to hurt the truck,” he says.

He concedes that some truck drivers are at fault, saying they push themselves too hard. But he insists that they are a minority.

Fatigue Main Problem

“The main problem is fatigue,” he says.

Roth points his finger toward a shiny double gasoline tanker rig, lighted up like a Christmas tree, making its way south.

“I feel sorry for some of those guys,” he says. “A lot of them are independents, paid by the load. “They run from Bakersfield to Los Angeles full, then have to return empty. Some of them make as many as three trips a night to make a living.”

Life is easier for unionized drivers at big companies. They are paid by the hour, and the union and regulators keep a closer watch on the time they spend behind the wheel, which is limited by state law to 12 hours a day.

At a truck stop in Bakersfield, two other truckers, Joe and Jack, join Roth and the reporter in a booth. Nearby, a waitress tries to rouse a man who has fallen asleep and is slumped over the counter.

“I hope he’s headed north,” says Joe, who is going the other way to Los Angeles.