Mexico Trucker Online

Editors Note: I’ve long admired and followed Carlos’ observations, writings and columns. The guy simply makes sense, especially in this circus like atmosphere surrounding this issue with all the hype, hysteria, propaganda and lies flying around out there.

San Antonio Express-News

Some issues just don’t go away. Or find resolution.

In a column headlined, “Honk! Make way for the global economy” I reported — in December 1995 — that Mexican trucks with Mexican drivers would be allowed on U.S. highways, and American-driven U.S. trucks would go into Mexico.

The hysteria evident in readers’ responses astounded me. Many wrote angrily about rattletrap Mexican 18-wheelers piloted at high speeds by drivers at best sleep-deprived. How can we allow drivers who can’t speak, much less read, English?

You would have thought that we were about to be invaded by marauding convoys of big rigs, driven by drug-crazed zombies searching for school buses full of kindergartners to plow into.

So when I read Meena Thiruvengadam’s story about the announcement, I knew the vicious remarks would return.

In case you didn’t hear, the U.S. Department of Transportation authorized one Mexican carrier to travel beyond border-hugging commercial zones where Mexican trucks are limited. And one U.S. shipper has been authorized to travel into Mexico’s interior. In a yearlong experiment, as many as 500 trucks from each country will be working beyond the border.

Until 1982, Mexican trucks could pick up and deliver cargo anywhere in the United States after passing the same inspections required of long-haul U.S. trucks. But U.S. trucks weren’t allowed into Mexico.

Because bi-national trade, though still small, was growing, the two nations forged a new accord: Each country’s trucks could pick up and deliver cargo within the other country’s commercial zones, areas 20 to 25 miles inland of the border.

But most didn’t because a “drayage industry” grew along both countries’ border areas.

But in larger border cities, like the two Laredos, the drayage fleets multiplied the numbers of trucks slowly moving on urban roads.

Each country’s shippers can still deliver within the other nation’s commercial areas, but most don’t. Instead, inland trucks are unloaded in yards in their own countries, and the cargo is reloaded onto drayage rigs for the border crossing. The drayage loads are then transferred onto the other country’s rigs for inland delivery, adding a day or two to shipping time.

“The number of drayage movements is between 10,000 to 13,000 per day here,” says Tim Franciscus, industrial development specialist of the Laredo Development Foundation.

“Here, almost all the cross-border movements are drayage trucks,” he says, and he wonders if that will change much because trucks will now be able to move in inland areas.

Franciscus also wonders what all the media fuss is about because the United States is finally living up to the promises we made in 1994.

“Here in Laredo,” which is the nation’s busiest land port, he says, “there are bigger issues, and this pilot program isn’t getting much press or discussion.”

And he wonders if authorizing each country’s carriers into the other country’s inland areas will change much.

“The reason we have drayage movement in Laredo is that the long-haul carriers in Mexico would prefer to not have their trucks going across,” Franciscus explains. “They would rather have the drayage companies sit on the bridge and do customs and things like that than have a long-haul carrier wasting hours, with a driver, at a bridge.”

He also expects carriers to wait to see how the new freedoms will be carried out.

“Think about it, if I’m a Mexican carrier, am I going to feel comfortable with my truck in the United States?” he asks.

“What if my truck breaks down here,” he continues, “will I know who to call?”

Where Franciscus does see a potential change is for shipments from inland destinations to maquiladoras that are close to the border, “where you can probably do the paperwork from, say Detroit, if you’re just going across to Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa or Matamoros.”