“They’re all booked up in New York and New Jersey. There’s no room. There is no more room. It was so overwhelming.”

Gail Toth was describing the torrent of trucks bringing donated goods to victims of the World Trade Center catastrophe.

Toth is executive director of the New Jersey Motor Truck Association. She has been in the middle of efforts to help truckers with nowhere to deliver the gifts of a deeply moved population. Toth said she got involved late last week after people around the country began responding to the disaster.

“I had trucking companies calling here saying they had all these loads but they had no address to deliver to. Did I know where it went?” Toth said.

Some carriers asked about the Jacob Javits Center, the enormous glass convention center uptown from what had come to be known as Ground Zero. But the Javits Center was already overwhelmed, said Toth.

“The carriers said I have a load of this. I have a load of that. We’ve got to get there. I said let me find out from DOT or FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) what we’re going to do here, where I can send you,” Toth explained.

Friday, Toth finally reached the right FEMA officials.

“Then Sunday morning I got a call from the U.S. DOT at home. They told me to call into a number for a conference call in regard to donations and what they’re going to do. It was FEMA, Red Cross, United Way, Salvation Army, state people, federal people, different departments,” she said.

“Everyone was saying, 'Hey, we don’t have any more room. What are we going to do?' A lot of this stuff has to be sorted and segregated and inventoried and manifested and put somewhere,” she said.

'I Think We Could Make a Lake With the Water We've Got'

As of yesterday, Toth said, uncounted trucks full of goods were waiting all over the metropolitan area, while many more were still on the way.

“People have gone out and they’ve gotten socks and work boots and blankets and water and water and water,” said Toth. “I think we could make a lake with the water we’ve got.”

Where are the trucks waiting?

“They’re all over the place,” she said.

Toth said she contacted every trucking organization she could think of.

“I went to OOIDA, TCA, National Private Truck [Council], ATA, all the state execs and asked them to pass on to their members: Don’t pick up any more stuff. We can’t handle it. We have no place to bring it to,” she said.

As of Tuesday, Toth said, authorities had designated five metropolitan-area warehouses to accept incoming donations, but a backlog of trucks still needed to be unloaded, with more on the way.

“They want to get the trucks unloaded that are already in the area. Next week they’ll work on the other trucks as they get more space,” said Toth.

How about local trucking in and around the disaster area?

“The trucking industry’s always going to roll,” said Toth of her members and other area carriers. “They’ve stood up and done an excellent job. In between doing their regular work, they’ve been volunteering left and right all over the place, doing all kind of loads.”