Trucking company roars back

RTK Producers' owner and manager air its grievances against charges

The management at RTK Producers said yesterday that their business has "never ducked any issues" when dealing with zoning and noise regulations, contrary to complaints voiced by neighbors.

Keith Tunstall, one of the three owners of the agricultural trucking business, and Gerry Goude, its manager expressed their displeasure with what they saw as unfair criticisms from neighbors on, among others, those two issues.

Neighbors last week voiced their concerns to the Columbia Basin Herald about the noise of the trucks, the smell of their cargo loads and what neighbors termed as an uncaring and "obnoxious" attitude by management towards the neighbors' complaints.

"We felt we were not given a fair chance to respond," Tunstall said.

The Herald contacted RTK early in the afternoon of the day prior to the article's publication. The owners were not at the office and couldn't comment, Tunstall said, given the nature of RTK's tasks, agricultural-based business, which requires field work during the day.

Both Tunstall and Goude said that during the seven years the company has been in business, no neighbor of theirs has come with a formal complaint. Instead, they only hear about their neighbors' worries "through the grapevine."

RTK has done a number of things to put its neighbors at ease, Tunstall said, such as moving their shift start times from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. and its 6 p.m. shift to 8 p.m.

His business, Tunstall added, does not leave the trucks loaded with the products they carry.

Goude said that most people should be and are up and awake by 8 a.m. Even at that time, the trucks do not leave the facility until 8:30 a.m.

Once the trucks are gone, Goude said, they do not return until the late afternoon, about two hours before the second shift starts at 8 p.m.

This description of the schedule flies in the face of complaints by neighbors who said trucks' engines are running up until the late hours of the night, and that the traffic of trucks interrupts' neighbors' sleep patterns.

Goude adamantly refutes these claims by people such as Mike Willey, a neighbor from a trailer park across the street.

"We left our trucks running one time at night because it was 10 degrees below," he said. "It has not happened more than two times."

The protests by neighbors living in the trailer park across the street from RTK point straight to the noise from the RTK trucks. Goude believes, however, that the culprit may be a few feet from his business.

"We are 297 feet away from the trailer court," he said. "Highway 17 is 222 feet away." He added that there is a good chance, in his opinion, that it was not RTK but the highway making all that noise the neighbors were complaining about.

While Scott Clark, the county's director of planning, said RTK had received citations for noise and zoning, Grant County Commissioner Tim Snead said RTK had bypassed zoning codes by obtaining other land-use permits.

"What have we bypassed?" Goude asked. "As far as I know this is still a light-industrial zone."

Goude said the only citation they had received was dismissed before the court date passed. Furthermore, Goude said RTK had some grievances of its own towards Willey.

"He never came here to say 'I have an issue,'" Goude said. "He always threatened legal action and threatened the secretaries."

"They were powerless to do anything but to put up with" Willey, Tunstall said, asking that if noise is such a problem for Willey why did he move so close to Highway 17.

Both the manager and the owner refuted the notion of RTK as a business that does not care about its community, another one of the accusations launched against the trucking company by neighbors.

Goude said that if the company were indeed uncaring, the morning shift would still be starting at 6 a.m., and the company would be based in somewhere other than Moses Lake.

When asked if they feel the neighbors' public comments were a vendetta, Goude and Turnstall said no, but they said they are concerned about the issue.

Goude added this is not an easy situation for them.

"We searched, we bought and we began to conduct business here" he said, noting the negativity of the complaints. "Put yourself in our shoes."