OOIDA concedes defeat - Mexican trucks to roll in August or September

In an interview with Mark Reddig on Land Line Now Friday, Laura O’Neil of OOIDA’s Washington office conceded there is not much left to do to prevent the Mexican Cross Border Pilot Program from beginning next month.

O’Neil, saying that OOIDA continues to look for any roadblock they can throw up to stop the program, conceded that with the August recess upon us, the debate over the debt ceiling increase and the fact that their is not much interest in Congress in stopping the program, that they are out of options. She did suggest that members approach their representatives in their home districts and whine and complain about EOBR’s and those “dirty old polluting” Mexican trucks, the latter that has been thoroughly debunked.

O’Neil did say however that when the trucks start to roll, that OOIDA will be watching very closely for anything they can use to try once again to hamper or sabotage the program as they have in the past. Their bogus claims about Trinity Industries, is the first example that comes to mind.

MEXICAN TRUCKS TO ROLL IN AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

Mexican trucks will begin shipping long-haul freight far into U.S. territory at the end of August or in early September the Mexican government said.

“We hope that by the end of August or early September the first company can enter with full rights,” Economy Secretary Bruno Ferrari told reporters in Washington after a three-day visit that ended Thursday and included meetings with U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

That first company, based in Monterrey, will be joined later by another 20 that had requested the right to transport cargo on U.S. roads before Washington barred access to Mexican trucks in 1995, Ferrari said, adding that those other firms could begin shipping freight deep inside the United States “before year’s end,”

Mexico expects other companies that are now submitting their paperwork for the program to be able to enter the United States within 18 months after the application date, as stipulated in the bilateral accord signed on July 6.

Ferrari said he was optimistic about the Cross Border Freight Truck Program deal and hailed the fact that the applications that Mexican trucking firms submitted two decades ago for access to U.S. roads remain valid.

“In the talks we stressed that we didn’t want a new program, but just to give effect to the previous one, which was not interrupted for reasons in Mexico but rather due to problems in this country (the United States),” the secretary said.

“I think there’ll be a lot of interest from Mexican companies,” the secretary said, noting that trucks transport roughly $275 billion worth of annual cargo shipments between the two countries, or 70 percent of the total.

Mexico’s Communications and Transportation Secretariat estimates that the new agreement will expedite the 4.5 million annual truck crossings, generating some $675 million in cost savings.

NEW PROGRAM IS A BIG NON ISSUE

“The new agreement will probably not open us any more to criminal enterprise than we are now,” said David McIntyre, a homeland security expert and vice president for academics at National Graduate School of Quality Management. “But we have a big problem with criminal enterprise right now.”

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee and whose district includes Laredo port of entry, said that when the Bush administration tried a pilot program for the cross-border trucks, only a few carriers participated.

“If anybody expects huge lines of Mexican trucks to come in across the border revving their engines, that’s not going to happen that way,” Cuellar said. “It’s expensive for a lot of those trucking companies … because they have to meet so many requirements on this side.”

James Clark, director of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Mexico Business Center, said security concerns are unfounded because U.S. and Mexican trucks get the same degree of scrutiny and inspection.

Clark rejected concerns that Mexican drivers won’t understand English, noting that language proficiency has long been required to drive a truck in the United States.
“Aeromexico pilots speak Spanish, too, but they land planes at LAX,” he said.

Efforts by OOIDA and their allies in Congress seem to be going nowhere, Rep. Peter DeFazio’s HR-2407, which would limit the program to 3 years, has garnered only 14 co-sponsors and is not made it out of committee.

OOIDA’s lawsuit attempting to stop the program, which on the surface, appears without any merit, has not been given a hearing date by the DC Court of Appeals.

And perhaps more telling, The TEAMSTERS and their ineffectual leader, James P. Hoffa, have made no moves to interfere this time as they did back in 2007.
[ad#in-post]