Road closures take big bite out of fruit shippers in Yakima

YAKIMA — The closures of highways linking the Yakima Valley to the Puget Sound area affected everything from local grocery stores to truck-repair shops to the agriculture industry.

"This whole weather situation is probably costing our businesses millions of dollars in lost time or missed connections," said Dave McFadden, president of the Yakima County Development Association, also known as New Vision.

State fruit shippers certainly have felt it. They lost out on lucrative sales of apples to Taiwan in advance of the Chinese New Year celebration, a $25 million business. Trucks carrying cartons of Fuji apples for shipment couldn't get through to Seattle, said Keith Mathews, executive director of the Yakima Valley Growers-Shippers Association.

"The difficult part is, it's a select grade and weight of box that doesn't have applicability in other markets," he said. "The concern is, we have packed a fair amount of fruit that doesn't fit anywhere else. We missed the business."

Truck-repair jobs at Western Peterbilt in Union Gap got two days behind because mechanics couldn't get the necessary parts, said Todd Harris, parts manager at Western Peterbilt.

About 90 percent of what the truck dealership and repair shop stocks is from a Renton warehouse.

Dealers were trying to reroute, "but sometimes that is not possible," Harris said.

The closures created a level of unpredictability for Associated Freight Brokers in Yakima.

It's difficult to respond to a customer's request when there's no certainty of when the mountain pass or the interstate will open, said James Ward, a broker with the company, which trucks produce to and from all points of the country.

And there were no trucks available because most were stuck empty in Seattle or were full of produce in the Yakima Valley, he said.

Meanwhile, other businesses made do.

Top Food & Drug and all the Safeway stores get their products from Western Washington warehouses. But both said the closures hadn't created any major shortages.

"The consumer will probably not notice a whole lot," said Becky Skaggs, spokeswoman for Haggen Co., the Bellingham-based firm that owns Top Food & Drug in Yakima. "Their variety may be out, but they can still get a loaf of bread."

Reporter Leah Beth Ward

contributed to this story.