Winter-Driving

Northern Ontario covers a staggering 800,000 square kilometres. Most of it has no roads at all. The communities that exist in this vast boreal zone — Hearst, Kapuskasing, Cochrane, Timmins — are connected by a handful of provincial highways that traverse some of the emptiest terrain in eastern North America. Among these, Highway 11 is the primary corridor, and the section between Hearst and Kapuskasing — roughly 100 kilometres of two-lane highway through the Clay Belt — represents the corridor at its most exposed.

Interstate 75 is one of the longest north-south interstates in the United States, running approximately 1,786 miles from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, at the Canadian border to Hialeah, Florida, near Miami. For commercial drivers, I-75 is a primary artery connecting the Midwest manufacturing belt and Great Lakes region to Florida’s population centers and Gulf ports. The full length of the route is demanding, but two sections in particular — Florida and Georgia — concentrate the corridor’s most acute dangers.

The Queen Elizabeth Way — the QEW — is the primary expressway connecting Toronto, the western Greater Toronto Area, Hamilton, and the Niagara region. It is one of the busiest commercial vehicle corridors in Ontario, carrying massive freight volumes between Toronto’s distribution infrastructure and the US border at Niagara Falls and Fort Erie. Somewhere near the middle of this corridor, between the cities of Burlington and Hamilton, sits a structure that concentrates the QEW’s inherent dangers into their most intense form: the Burlington Skyway.

Montana Highway 2 runs approximately 650 miles across the northern tier of Montana from the Idaho border near Glacier National Park east to the North Dakota state line at Williston — a route known as the “Hi-Line” that follows the path of the old Great Northern Railway through some of the most sparsely populated terrain in the continental United States.

It does not look dangerous. That is part of what makes it deadly.

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).

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.

Northwestern Ontario is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Canada. The vast boreal forest between the Manitoba border and Thunder Bay is crossed by a thin ribbon of highway — Highway 17, the main surface route through the region and part of the Trans-Canada Highway system. The approximately 200-kilometre section between Kenora and Dryden distills everything that makes northern Ontario highway driving difficult: long distances, no services, dense wildlife, severe winters, and the particular hazard of fatigue that sets in when hours pass with no town, no fuel stop, and no change in scenery.

Highway 401 through southern Ontario is, by vehicle count, the busiest highway in North America — and arguably the world. At its widest point through Toronto, the 401 carries over 400,000 vehicles per day across up to 18 lanes of traffic. For commercial truck drivers, this corridor is the backbone of Canadian freight: virtually all goods moving between Windsor (and the US border at Detroit), Toronto, Montreal, and the Maritime provinces travel this route.