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Execs promise immediate review of procedures in Smucker incident

A “miscommunication” could have proved deadly for approximately 15 drivers who were left to fend for themselves as tornado sirens blasted at the Exel Inc. warehouse on Tuesday, Oct. 26, near Cincinnati, OH.

Heeding the radio warnings that instructed them to seek shelter, some drivers attempted to go inside and wait out the storm at the Exel warehouse, which is a third-party logistics provider for J.M. Smucker Co.

OOIDA Member Duane Soderstrom of Bloomington, WI, was one of the drivers who was refused entry during the tornado warning. He was there to pick up his Smucker’s load when he said security guards told him to go back to his truck, wait out the storm, and that guards would come get him after it was over.

“I thought, hey, you’re going for shelter, why do we have to sit in the trucks,” he told Land Line on Wednesday, Oct. 27.

Lynn Anderson, vice president of communications for Exel, which has 380 sites in the United States, said the incident was a misunderstanding between Exel management and the security guards, who are not employees of Exel, but instead work for a third-party security company. She said the management at Exel wasn’t aware that drivers were left outside in their lot.

“Our management staff wasn’t aware of what was going on with the folks operating outside the site there and again our policy doesn’t specifically address what an outside provider might do in that situation,” she told Land Line .

She added that the safety of Exel employees and their business partners is their “primary concern.”

“We are conducting a full review of the incident that occurred yesterday and will work toward ensuring that our policies and procedures are understood by our partners and on-site vendors, and that they are applied accordingly in any future emergency situations,” Anderson said.

Executives at Smucker’s are also reviewing the incident since Exel is one of their third-party providers.

Maribeth Badertscher, vice president of corporate communications, said an “immediate and thorough review” has been ordered into what happened at the Cincinnati facility.

“The safety of Smucker employees, customers, partners and anyone on our properties is of paramount importance to our company,” Badertscher wrote in a statement.

“We have reinforced the importance of safety with our third-party logistics provider and requested an immediate and thorough review of this incident,” she stated.

As for Soderstrom, in his 25-plus years of trucking, he said this situation tops anything he’s ever experienced out on the road.

He said that luckily a tornado didn’t touch down and no one was hurt, but things could have turned out differently for the drivers if a tornado had touched down and they were stuck in their trucks.

Soderstrom said the ironic twist to the story is that when he was handed his paperwork with instructions on getting loaded after the tornado warning was over, the back page did have an evacuation map for fires and the three sites where the tornado shelters were located. However, he said this information was of “no good” to drivers who couldn’t go inside.

“It was a safety issue,” he said. “The radio stations were hollering take cover and if you are in a vehicle on the road, head for a low-lying ditch, and here we are told to stay in the truck. This is really bull.”

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Staff Reporter Reed Black contributed to this report.

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