During the scheduled meeting of the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee in Alexandria Virginia yesterday, those were the words of Carlos Sesma, an attorney representing Mexican trucking interests before the committee. And Sesma was correct. The MCSAC is a subcommittee of the FMCSA charged with overseeing the Mexican Cross Border Pilot Program. OOIDA Executive Vice-President Todd Spencer who is a member of the committee was making the usual asinine and totally false claims about the program. “What’s behind this is access to cheaper sources of labor,” Spencer claimed after the meeting, repeating the thoroughly debunked claim that it will put American ….Read More

An opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in response to a lawsuit filed by the Owner Operators Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) against the mandate for Electronic Onboard Recorders (EOBR’s) has effectively vacated the regulation for now based on the argument of “driver harassment” and sent it back to the FMCSA for reconsideration and a possible rewrite. This is a major victory for US truckers who have fought against the implementation of this regulation. However, the fight continues as two Senators, Lamar Alexander and David Prior have a bill pending before Congress which would make this ….Read More

Today’s El Paso Times has a piece out titled “1 Million Truck Violations Cited at Border Crossing”by Diana Washington who has in the past been a reputable reporter on things concerning the US/Mexico border in El Paso. But the story is misleading and just the sort of thing we expect OOIDA to jump on first thing tomorrow morning. So let’s defuse this bomb before they have a chance to use it. The story reads in full; Texas state inspectors in El Paso have found thousands of safety violations in trucks coming from Mexico, including bad brakes, flat tires, axle problems ….Read More

Much of the misinformation coming from opponents of cross border trucking with Mexico seems to be coming from ignorance of the country rather than deliberate attempts to misinform the public, I’d like to think, at least where the regulatory structure in Mexico is concerned. Two of those issues that have been forcibly pushed on the public is lack of Hours of Service Regulations in Mexico and what some perceive as a “weak” or non existent regulations for the Mexican trucking industry. Regulations of the trucking industry in Mexico is neither of those. The differences are enormous as trucking journalist Tim ….Read More




