DUNMORE -- There are a lot of parked trucks at road scholar transport in Dunmore. None of their 120 trucks went anywhere Wednesday. There were similar truck bans on highways in New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut where they also do business.
Truckers we talked to say the money lost is worth the safety.
A gas station in Gouldsboro was packed with parked tractor-trailers. Drivers had plans for the day the snow stalled.
"(I'm trying) to get this load dropped and grab another one, and go back to where it's warm, but that ain't happening," said driver Kevin Gowenz.
PennDOT announced Tuesday afternoon that all commercial vehicles would be banned from Interstates 380 and 84. Message boards started displaying the news at midnight. But many drivers here found out about the ban after it was too late to beat the snow.
"I just found out about it 15 minutes ago, so I was about to head on out but somebody told me you can't go on the interstates, so I mean, I don't know. I'd like to make it out of here if I could, but they got to do what they got to do. I have to follow the law," said driver Kamau Jackson.
"I understand protection and stuff, but for a lot of us, we could have been dropped and been out of here hours ago. But, it is what it is I guess," Gowenz added.
Drivers who stayed on the interstates anyway risked a ticket from state troopers or potentially something worse. That's why Road Scholar Transport in Dunmore decided to park all of its trucks for the day.
Of course, that will have consequences.
"We will be definitely jammed. We're still jammed up from last Friday," said Jim Barrett of Road Scholar Transport. "That still hasn't gotten cleaned up, so this is just going to exacerbate it. There will be massive restocking capabilities for the food and grocery folks. Retail's going to be beat up. It'll be interesting."
Road Scholar says some of its trucks got stuck in traffic during last week's storm. Luckily, no one was hurt. They did not want to take that risk again.