Trucking slows on the Dalton Highway: freight corridor is Alaska's 'road to the bank'.

• Author: Resz, Heather A.
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Transportation

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Most Alaskans never drive on the 415-mile Dalton Highway, the supply line for the North Slope oil fields carved out of the wilderness by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company between April and September 1974.

The Dalton Highway heads north from Mile 73 of the Elliot Highway, crossing the mighty Yukon River at Mile 56, the Arctic Circle at Mile 115, and passing the farthest north spruce at Mile 235 before reaching Atigun Pass at Mile 244 in the Brooks Range. Beyond the Continental Divide there, the highway stretches north toward the horizon across 170 flat, tree-less miles of tundra before terminating in Deadhorse, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

Also known as the Haul Road, it is one of two roads in North America that extends above the Arctic Circle and is the sole ground transportation link to the North Slope oil patch.

Year-round shippers like Alaska West Express, Carlile Transportation, Lynden Transport, and Sourdough Express haul millions of pounds of freight for North Slope customers--everything from food and fuel to oil field modules and heavy equipment.

Although the Dalton Highway provides access to Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge, Gates of the Arctic National Park, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities maintains the road as a supply route for the oil fields.

"A lot of folks don't understand the significance of that road," says Aves Thompson, executive director at Alaska Trucking Association.

Deadhorse is the main oil field work camp for the North Slope. By state counts, a handful of people live there year-round--but the rest of the oil field's thousands of employees arrive on jets from Anchorage and Fairbanks to work their scheduled fourteen-day, or longer, shifts before flying home.

Besides human power, everything else needed to produce more than 550,000 barrels of oil a day is shipped north hundreds of miles by rail and road. Cost and time considerations determine how each load is shipped north, Thompson says.

Some loads are broken down in Fairbanks and consolidated into new loads and hauled the last 498 miles to Deadhorse by trucking companies such as Lynden, Carlile, and Sourdough. Other loads are oversized and must traverse the whole distance by road.

Thompson says occasional flooding or snowstorms that close the Haul Road serve as good reminders that in Alaska, this is the "road to the bank."

"When they start...