Road-Conditions

Interstate 20 enters Louisiana from Texas at the Shreveport–Bossier City metro and continues east through the Red River floodplain to Monroe before eventually reaching Mississippi. For truckers who run east-west freight across the South, this corridor is a consistent fixture in conversations about the worst road surfaces in the country — and it earns that reputation not through dramatic mountain hazards or blizzard conditions, but through something more mundane and perhaps more insidious: infrastructure that has simply not kept pace with the demands placed on it.

Interstate 40 replaced Route 66 as the primary east-west freight corridor across the American Southwest, and it has inherited all of Route 66’s exposure to one of the most demanding environments a highway can occupy: desert heat, expansive terrain, sparse services, and a climate that destroys road infrastructure faster than maintenance budgets can keep up with it. Between the California border and the Oklahoma state line, I-40 passes through approximately 1,000 miles of some of the roughest pavement on the US interstate system.

Michigan’s roads have a national reputation that has transcended trucking circles into popular culture. The state’s infrastructure funding shortfall, combined with one of the most punishing freeze-thaw climates in the contiguous United States, has produced a highway network that truckers and civilians alike recognize immediately. “Michigan, Michigan, and Michigan is pretty bad too.” “I75 in Michigan heading towards Detroit is an abomination.” One trucker reported getting motion sickness from the sustained bouncing on a Michigan interstate. This is the road.