It’s the season to be aware of slow moving trucks lumbering down the road, especially the U.S. Highway 14A, and to watch out for deer and antelope darting onto the road. 

All this week tractors have been trailing clouds of dust through fields and big trucks have been lumbering up and down U.S. Highway 14A loaded with sugar beets for the early Western Sugar delivery.  The widened four-lane on 14A in the last decade, complete with turning lanes at intersecting roads, is a huge improvement between Powell and Cody during harvest season’s heavy truck traffic.  But this is still a time for heightened highway awareness. 

The beet season means long nights and early mornings for farmers when they can harvest and, for those driving on the highway and other area roads, it’s more reason to be especially vigilant and aware of surroundings. 

There have been a number of bad accidents involving beet trucks being run into by inattentive drivers in recent years, including a fatal crash in 2018. The trucks are driving well below the 70 mph speed limit in many cases, so drivers need to be aware of the speed difference and be prepared to slow down and switch lanes. 

It’s an additional issue to be aware of on a road where drivers can often cruise nonchalantly to and from work. But right now it’s not just deer and antelope to watch out for at dawn and dusk, but, big, slow-moving trucks. 

Of course, animals remain a big issue. At a Park County Commissioners meeting last week sheriff Scott Steward, in discussing new deputy vehicle purchases, was asked about the biggest issues impacting his fleet. He said while both his Chevy and Dodge trucks have often unique mechanical issues that have to be dealt with, there’s one problem that has the same often devastating affect, no matter what vehicle is being driven. 

“Our biggest issues are deer strikes, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Chevy or Dodge,” he said. 

And no matter what you’re driving, even a 1-ton pickup with a grill guard, it won’t come out on the winning end of a crash with a beet truck. 

As the northwest regional Wyoming Department of Transportation office noted in a Facebook post shared by Wyoming Sugar Company in Worland on the start of harvest down there, “Watch out for the Trucks! Slow down, and yield to one another!”