I-95 collapse location particularly tough on Philly-area food suppliers

The strip of I-95 shut by Sunday’s bridge collapse serves some of the Philadelphia area’s key food suppliers.

On Monday afternoon, they were just starting to figure out how much extra time and which unusual routes they would need to keep their trucks and people on the road — and Philadelphians fed — until the highway is fixed.

Distributors have called grocers to warn of delays, as the shutdown disrupts trailers shuttling between merchants and importers, from the large East Coast produce centers at Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx and the Philadelphia Regional Produce Market in Southwest Philly, said Vince Finazzo, owner of Riverwards Produce grocery stores in Fishtown and Old City.

And that’s just the fruits and vegetables, he added, noting that dairy, meats, and other foods have their own supply chains that are now disrupted in their last miles to city locations.

“Everything is going to get here, but with lots of delays,” Finazzo said. “They are shooing everyone off I-95 south into the neighborhoods. I’ve seen semitrailer traffic on Richmond Ave., where it’s just two lanes. Aramingo also, where it pinches, below the shopping centers.”

Street closures in the neighborhood tripled suburban commute times and sent staff by roundabout routes through New Jersey to get to other parts of Philadelphia, said Steve Riley, partnerships and communications manager at Dietz & Watson, whose flagship deli meats plant is on Tacony Street.

“It’s tough getting people in, and we can’t yet speak for the trucks going out. PennDot is still working it out,” he added.

“Today is just day one,” said Bobby Bailey Jr., vice president at Delaware-based Burris Logistics, whose Honor Foods division operates a two-year-old, 225,000-square-foot, 180-employee food warehouse just up Tacony Street from Dietz & Watson. Honor, like nearby Baldor Foods, is a busy user of Northeast Philly’s highway network. Last year Honor purchased Sommer Maid Creamery in Bucks County and began distributing its butter, cheese, and other dairy products.

For trucks rolling from other parts of Northeast Philly, “they’re pushing drivers over to [Roosevelt] Boulevard,” said Vince Schiavone, executive director of Caring for Friends, a food charity based in the Parkwood section north of the shutdown highway.

To get to the Philadelphia Regional Produce Market and a warehouse the charity maintains near the airport, “we’re sending trucks over to Jersey and back,” Schiavone added. “It adds hours to our time on the road. And a lot of people who pick food up at our warehouse can’t get to it.”

Bentley Truck Services, which leases and sells trucks from a location on State Road near the crash site and fixes them at a collision repair facility on the same street farther north, already faced daily backups on State. On Monday, anticipating much heavier traffic from the highway shutdown, owner Fred Bentley said his company adjusted its hours “to try to move equipment during off-peak hours, for the next few days at least, until we have a better idea” what routes will be available.

“I’m sure [state and city authorities] will allow some flexibility” for city commercial traffic that businesses and residents depend on, Bentley added. He noted that trucks moving between New York and Washington can go down the New Jersey Turnpike or roads west of the city.

But it’s already clear that in his early-rising business, “we are all going to have to get up earlier.”