DUPONT -- The busiest stretch of road in northeastern Pennsylvania was a virtual parking lot for roughly nine hours Thursday.
A deadly crash early Thursday morning shut down one lane of Interstate 81 north near the airport exit in Luzerne County and for much of the day, the ride from Wilkes-Barre to Scranton was nearly impossible.
The big wreck on I-81 affected traffic, business, and everyday lives in pretty much every town between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.
Thought you'd miss it by going through Avoca? No luck. Thought you'd try the Turnpike? You found a half-mile wait at the toll booth.
At Bobby O's restaurant in Dupont, the traffic was the topic of the day.
Drivers swapped tales about how they did or did not manage to get around the backup.
“I went up 315 thinking that I would get around it, but as soon as I got up by that old Walmart, just standstill for probably 15 minutes,” said Brian Patronick of Plains Township.
“Especially if you get on at Wilkes-Barre, you've got ten miles between Wilkes-Barre and Dupont and there's no way off. And you're definitely not going to turn around and go the other way,” Lisa Skowronski of Dupont said.
A truck driver from the Harrisburg area was killed in the crash, when his rig rolled off the interstate just before 7 a.m.
The backup stretched as far as ten miles at times and it was nine hours before crews could finally clear the crash scene.
“We heard it was major 2-3 hour backups. It was terrible,” Bobby O's owner Eric Friedman said.
And for some business owners like Friedman, it was costly, too.
His restaurant had to cancel a number of lunch deliveries, because drivers just couldn't get around.
Friedman however put it in perspective, when he thought about the truck driver who was the cause of it all.
“You can't complain about a bad day, when he had the ultimate bad day.”