OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – This week’s winter storm is impacting everything from power to package deliveries. The inclement weather caused a hold up at a southwest Oklahoma City Amazon warehouse, as many truckers showed up to drop off loads not knowing the facility was closed.
KFOR counted 14 semi-trucks waiting outside the facility at 9201 South Portland Ave., Thursday evening.
One trucker told us he drove from Los Angeles and arrived Thursday morning at 9 a.m. to find no one at the facility to allow him into the gate. Another trucker said he arrived from Tulsa at 6 p.m. Wednesday evening fully expecting to make a quick drop and leave. Now, he has to wait for whenever the warehouse opens back up to proceed with his business.
Trucker Ben Jones made a 400-mile drive from St. James, Mo., to OKC for a 9 a.m. drop-off appointment at the warehouse Thursday.
“I get here and I’m sitting here like, ‘That don’t look right, nobody’s here,'” he said.
The facility looked completely empty, just covered in snow from this week’s winter storm.
Jones joined over a dozen other truckers who had been waiting for hours — some even overnight — with no idea when the warehouse would allow them in to make their drops.
“Well, you can’t control Mother Nature,” he said. “The snow, you can’t control it, but I drove through some bad weather to get here, you know? It seems like they can drive from their house here to get to work, you know? Or tell somebody that they’re not coming in.”
The storm has caused many challenges in the OKC metro area. OG&E has been hard at work restoring power for thousands.
Spokeswoman Trisha Koelsch said they have 600 workers stationed in Western OKC Thursday night dealing with galloping, which is when the combination of ice and a certain wind pattern cause power lines to move up and down.
Koelsch said Thursday night will have no shortage of difficulties.
“Mainly the high wind gusts,” she said. “It can be challenging to work in high winds. Then also, that’s what’s really causing the outages is the galloping of those lines. So those crews are working in shifts 24/7, that way we have coverage overnight as well if anything were to come in overnight.””
As for the truckers outside of Amazon, they said they’ve had no word on how long they’ll have to wait to deliver their packages.
“So, looks like I’ll be spending the night here,” Jones said.
An Amazon spokesperson sent the following statement to KFOR at 10 p.m. Thursday:
“We routinely monitor weather to ensure the safety of our employees, partners and those delivering for us. Our facility, OKC1, has been closed since Wednesday afternoon due to inclement weather. We made routine notifications to our partners about the closure for re-routing or other arrangements. The facility plans to re-open tomorrow at 11 a.m. to allow time for the road conditions to improve.”
AMAZON SPOKESPERSON
