Route 60 widening aids highway commerce

Manufacturers along the U.S. Route 60 corridor in Missouri hope improvements to the highway will lead to lower freight costs, and area trucking companies see safety as the key issue.

The final $28 million phase of the four-lane expansion of Route 60, from south-central Winona in Shannon County to just west of Route C in Carter County, opened to traffic last month. The Missouri Department of Transportation has added lanes on the highway between Springfield and Sikeston in multiple phases since the 1970s.

U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.; U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo.; and MoDOT officials celebrated the final expansion Aug. 13 with event stops along the highway.

Eric Metz, manager of Camcorp Manufacturing’s Willow Springs plant, said the highway’s impact would be felt in what his company pays in shipping its industrial-size vacuums.

“Especially on oversized loads, they get to be very costly,” Metz said. “The highway going through may allow us more direct routing as it stands now. A lot of the drivers have to take various roads trying to get here, and now they have a more direct shot.”

Metz would neither disclose Camcorp’s annual shipping costs nor estimate an expected savings for delivering the custom metal-fabrication shop’s “glorified vacuum cleaners” for dust and pollution control in industrial plants. One of its larger products is a freestanding, multistory “bag house” shipped in pieces and assembled on site.

“I realize Willow Springs is just a small town on 60,” said Jay Waggoner, Willow Springs mayor. “It benefits Springfield more than us. It provides a four-lane corridor to the East Coast. But we will benefit.”

Springfield trucking company officials say the expanded highway mainly provides additional safety, which may help control costs.

Safety is a sensitive issue right now at Springfield-based Prime Inc., which had two drivers involved in a pair of fatality accidents earlier this year – one in Idaho and another in Kansas, according to Don Lacy, Prime’s director of safety. The company’s drivers were not at fault in either wreck, but because a Prime driver was involved, it goes on the company’s record with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Lacy said, driving up the company’s insurance and shipping costs.

Lacy said in the federal government’s eyes, it doesn’t matter which driver is at fault when an accident occurs. “Fewer accidents equates to better earnings,” he said, adding the new lanes should lessen the risk for loss of lives.

O&S Trucking Inc. drivers haul goods daily along Route 60, said Sundy Muse-Morton, the Springfield trucking company’s director of recruiting and driver development.

“It gets shuttle moves as well as over-the-road moves,” Muse-Morton said, though she couldn’t estimate the total O&S truck traffic on Route 60.

Lower truck maintenance costs also would be an advantage of the new highway, Muse-Morton said.

“If you’re running over a well-maintained or a newer road, something that’s smooth, then you don’t have the wear and tear,” she said. “The bumps and the jolts, it’s no different on a big truck, it’s just on a bigger scale. Having that nicer, smoother road is going to make it easier on maintenance.”