Mountain-Grades

When a trucker starting a drive from El Paso to Kentucky mentions that they see “at least one runaway truck” every time they pass through Tennessee, they’re talking about Monteagle. The town of Monteagle sits at the summit of the Cumberland Plateau in Grundy County, Tennessee, and the descent from that plateau down to the Tennessee Valley floor on Interstate 24 is one of the most infamous truck grades in the southeastern United States.

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.