Workers pull a damaged section of the I-10 bridge from Lake Pontchartrain after Hurricane Katrina.

“To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new.” So goes the opening of Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 novel, All the King’s Men, inspired by the life and death of Louisiana’s Huey Long. The populist governor built 2,000 miles of paved roads in a state that had only 300 miles when he was elected.

Warren’s opening might do well today to describe a drive on I-10 northeast out of New Orleans – except for the “good” and “new.” Thanks largely to I-10, this year’s Overdrive Highway Report Card survey of owner-operators bestows the Worst Roads crown upon a veteran of the Top Five, the Bayou State of Louisiana.

John Clark of Bradenville, Pa., hauls produce for FST Logistics. Although he runs through Pennsylvania – the state most frequently at the head of the Worst Roads list in its 16-year history, and a close second this year – he says I-10 alone is bad enough to qualify Louisiana for the top spot. “It’s awful,” he says, citing the potholes and bumps.

Bad roads nationwide force Clark to replace his shocks every seven to 12 months. “You hit a couple good potholes, and it blows them out.”

Wayne Strother Sr. of Bunkie, La., an independent who hauls grain and produce from Texas to Georgia, decries a 35-mile stretch of I-10 around Lake Charles that he runs weekly. “It’s falling to pieces over there,” he says. “You have to run in the left lane to keep from tearing your stuff up.”