Washington State Route 281 from Quincy to George Upgraded by WSDOT to Busiest Truck Freight Corridor

QUINCY, Wash., Nov. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration have recently reclassified/upgraded Washington State Route (SR) 281 from a T-2 to a T-1 Truck Freight Corridor, which is the busiest category/classification of truck freight corridor, meaning that over 10 million tons or more of freight moves on a T-1 highway or corridor annually.

SR 281 is located within the boundaries of the Port of Quincy and runs for approximately 10 miles between Interstate 90 (I-90) at George, Washington and State Route 28 at Quincy, Washington. According to the WSDOT report published in 2020, the SR 281 (Quincy-George) corridor now has an annual freight tonnage of 11,770,000 tons per year and the number of trucks on SR 281 is averaging 2,000 per day.

There are several reasons for the reclassification of SR 281 to a T-1 Truck Freight Corridor. For example, a large volume of truck traffic on SR 281 comes from the Wenatchee and Chelan areas on SR 28 via SR 281 to I-90. In addition, the Wenatchee and Chelan areas are among the largest fruit packing areas in the world. Furthermore, a great deal of truck traffic comes directly from Quincy, as there are several food processors (frozen French fries, frozen vegetables, etc.), fresh produce packers (apples, potatoes, cherries, onions, etc.), and over 1 million square feet of cold storage warehousing in Quincy, which stores many of the above mentioned products that are mostly transported from Quincy on SR 281 to I-90, destined for export from the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, or for Midwest or East Coast domestic markets.

The Port of Quincy also has a modern Intermodal Terminal / Inland Port Facility located on the BNSF mainline (i.e... Stevens Pass line), which is currently providing truck intermodal export services for shippers and exporters in Washington State. In particular, the Intermodal Terminal is providing storage and loading services for 20' and 40' export containers of frozen food products going by truck from central Washington to the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, and the number of containers being stored and loaded at the Terminal has increased dramatically in the past five years. Additionally, the Port of Quincy has been receiving some inquiries from shippers and other stakeholders about the possibility of utilizing the Port of Quincy Intermodal Terminal as a westbound inland intermodal port in central Washington in which trains could be loaded at the Intermodal Terminal with ocean containers of Washington State agricultural products and then be railed to the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma to be loaded onto ocean container ships.

For more information, please contact Curt Morris or Patrick Boss of the Port of Quincy at 509-557-0843 or [email protected].

About Port of Quincy 
Located in the center of Washington State near the Columbia River, the Port of Quincy is ranked as one of the top low-cost rural locations in the United States for business and economic development with a full array of infrastructure including: plentiful low-cost hydropower electricity, high-capacity bandwidth dark fiber, an abundant supply of irrigation water, a major interstate freeway (I-90), a large capacity water treatment system, an ample supply of natural gas, a skilled workforce, approved foreign trade zone status, relatively inexpensive industrial and commercial properties, nearby commercial air service, a key cross-country rail mainline (BNSF Railway from Seattle to Chicago), a modern rail intermodal terminal, and a central location in the heart of Washington State's most productive irrigated agricultural region. The Port of Quincy has premier sites for food processing and food manufacturing companies, warehousing, distribution and cold storage companies, high-tech companies, and data centers, etc. At the Port of Quincy major fresh produce, food processing & warehousing companies such as Lamb Weston, National Frozen Foods, NORPAC, Amway-Nutrilite, Double Diamond Fruit (CMI Orchards), Custom Apple Packers (Oneonta Starr Ranch Growers), Jones Produce, Lineage Logistics, etc. find themselves next to major technology companies like H5, Microsoft, NTT Data, Sabey, Vantage and Verizon (Yahoo!).

SOURCE Port of Quincy