With the most common annual move-in season underway, it’s become inevitable for some drivers to fall victim to getting “Storrowed” — the common term for when a box truck crashes or gets stuck under a low-clearance bridge on Storrow Drive. It happens so often that Bostonians may use "Storrowing" to refer to a stuck truck on other low-clearance routes, such as Memorial Drive and Soldiers Field Road along the Charles River, where one U-Haul lost its roof earlier today.
🚚💥 #Storrowing on Soldiers Field Road eastbound in #Boston tore the roof off this moving truck. @MassDOT said the bridge was inspected and no damage was found. pic.twitter.com/TCDawmKyel
— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) September 1, 2022
While seasoned Bostonians know to avoid these roadways while driving a moving truck, those less familiar with the region won’t find warnings about low clearance routes on common navigation apps like Google Maps or Waze. But drivers can use truck navigations apps — including one created in Boston with Storrow Drive in mind — to prevent them from getting stuck.
Truck-focused navigation apps including TruckMap, Hammer, TruckerPath and SmartTruckRoute all allow users to enter the height of their vehicle in order to only receive routes that fit that vehicle’s configuration. SmartTruckRoute also has an alert system, so if a driver enters an unsafe road, the app will issue a warning that they need to find a different route.
“It'll just beg them. It'll say, look, you really need to get out,” said Marleen Winer, vice president of TeleType Co., the Boston-based company behind the navigation app. "Then eventually it will stop [offering directions for that route]."
Winer said Storrow Drive was the first test in ensuring their app took trucks on safe routes.
“Being that we're based in New England, there's a lot of material, there's a lot of data and there's a great need for it,” she said. “I mean, every year people make mistakes and there are people that come from New York and they get stuck on Storrow because they think they can go there even though there's warnings.”
The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, responsible for managing Storrow Drive, stated in a press release Tuesday that they increased signage throughout the area of Storrow Drive and conducted outreach to truck rental companies, moving companies and educational institutions to raise awareness about roadway height restrictions.
State officials recommend than anyone renting a truck check their route ahead of time to ensure the vehicle could fit. And once they're on the road, police say drivers should pay close attention to signs warning about height restrictions so they don't get stuck and are forced to back out.
“The instances of bridge strikes by overheight rental trucks each fall is as preventable as it is predictable,” said Massachusetts State Police Superintendent Col. Christopher Mason said in a press release.
But it's not just moving trucks that are the problem. Chris Amaral, founder of Safe Responsible Movers in Allston, wrote in an email that his company has never had a truck hit a bridge on Storrow Drive. He thinks many incidents of “Storrowing” are the fault of professional drivers from outside of Boston who aren’t familiar with local truck limitations, not just college students moving to the city.
Because his drivers are local to Boston and are trained to avoid Storrow Drive, Amaral wrote that they use regular GPS systems to navigate, not any special software.
