West

At 3,020 miles, Interstate 90 is the longest US interstate highway — running from the waterfront of Seattle to the streets of Boston. Most of its length is manageable freight territory. But three segments make I-90 a serious winter corridor for commercial drivers: the Cascade passes of Washington State, the open range of Montana, and the Buffalo–Albany snow belt of upstate New York.

Understanding these segments, and knowing how to navigate them, is essential for any driver or dispatcher running the northern transcontinental freight lane.

Interstate 84 is the primary east-west freight corridor through Oregon and Idaho, following the Columbia River gorge before turning south through the high desert toward Boise and Salt Lake City. Most of this route is straightforward for experienced commercial drivers — until the highway climbs into the Blue Mountains east of Pendleton.

At the summit of what truckers call Cabbage Hill (the locals’ name for the Emigrant Hill section of I-84), the road crests above 4,000 feet before dropping dramatically toward the Umatilla River valley and Pendleton below. What follows is one of the most consequential descents on any US interstate.

Colorado sits at the intersection of two of the highest transcontinental freight routes in North America: I-70 crossing the Continental Divide at the Eisenhower Tunnel, and US-160 serving the southwestern corner of the state. Both routes have sections that force trucks onto some of the most demanding roads in commercial driving — roads that make the already-challenging main corridors look mild by comparison.

This article covers two of those routes: Loveland Pass (US-6) and Wolf Creek Pass (US-160).

Interstate 405 runs 30 miles along the eastern shore of Lake Washington from Renton in the south through Bellevue, Kirkland, and Bothell to its junction with I-5 at Lynnwood in the north. It is the primary bypass route for commercial vehicles avoiding downtown Seattle on I-5, and it is widely regarded among truckers as one of the most difficult urban driving environments in the western US.

The combination of extremely high traffic volume, curves and hills that are unusual for an interstate, a chronically degraded road surface, and aggressive driving behavior from a tech-corridor commuter population creates conditions that demand constant attention from commercial drivers.