Mexico Trucker Online

Soldiers attached to the First Mechanized Calvary Regimen enjoyed another successful operation in the border town of Miguel Aleman Tamaulipas.

On Saturday, a patrol searching a residence at 450 Huizache in the Colonia Rio Mezquital,

They found two people bound and gagged who had apparently been kidnapped. These people were identified as Luis Octavio Garcia Estrada, 30, a native of Miguel Aleman, and Eduardo Cruz Flores Flores, 18, a native of Monterrey NL.

Additionally, they discovered 45 packages of various sizes and forms,containing 477 kilos of marijuana and 9 packages of cocaine weighing 9 kilos.

Read the rest of this entry »

In this era of escalating fuel prices, unheard of numbers of truck repossession and a stagnant freight base, some people just don’t get it.

From the AP and The Trucker comes the headline story of
Teamsters picket Washington-based trucking company

AUBURN, Wash. — Picketers are carrying Teamsters strike signs outside Oak Harbor Freight operations in the Pacific Northwest.

Oak Harbor Freight lines, with 1300 employees, of which almost half are Teamsters (550) walked yesterday after talks between management and labor came to an impasse’.

Read the rest of this entry »

The House has made it veto-proof clear: The controversial pilot program allowing big Mexican trucks to cross the U.S. border and travel into the country must end.

The Senate has yet to act, though. And Mexico and its U.S. big-business allies are ramping up their efforts to block the repeal, including a renewed warning by Mexican officials to retaliate against U.S. exports if the program is abolished.

So begins an excellent article on the Mexican Cross Border Program from a neutral perspective, in a story published at Politico.com

And the proponents should continue to fight to keep this program which is a legal obligation we have under the terms of the NAFTA agreement that we signed with Canada and Mexico.

The article points out what we’ve been saying all along, that this has nothing to do with truck safety, concern for the safety of other motorists or any of the myriad of excuses that have come from the opposition.

Read the rest of this entry »

The home team trails in the third quarter as the underdog visitors steadily advance the ball. Coaches are nervous; fans are grumbling. Desperate for a turnaround, the home team announces a surprise rule change: From now on, the visitors are banned from crossing the 50-yard line.

Sounds absurd, but that’s what Congress proposes to do with NAFTA, the free-trade accord it approved in 1993. Sure, NAFTA might not be a crowd pleaser. It is, however, a treaty that legally binds the United States. The rules don’t change just because the home team is in trouble.

NAFTA has always included provisions to grant U.S., Mexican and Canadian truckers access to one another’s shipping routes. Bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, yielding to pressure from the Teamsters, voted last week to halt a year-old pilot program that allowed a few dozen properly inspected, safe Mexican trucks to haul cargo deep within U.S. territory.

Short of using actual facts, the Teamsters and truckers groups have done everything possible to feed the worst stereotypes about the dangers of Mexican trucks on U.S. highways.

It’s harder when facts get in the way:

Read the rest of this entry »

As of September 16, Mexican carriers applying a fuel surcharge of just over 43 cents per kilometer

Starting this week truckers and Mexican carriers affiliated with the National Chamber of Autotransporte de Carga (CANACAR) will implement a fuel surcharge of just over 43 cents per kilometre in addition to their normal rates of haul which average about $2.50 per kilometer, calculated from the increase in the price of diesel.

Read the rest of this entry »

Border Patrol agents seized more than 1,400 pounds of marijuana over the weekend in four separate busts, according to Laredo Sector Border Patrol

The most recent seizure occurred Monday at Texas 16 traffic checkpoint.

Hebbronville agents observed a white pickup truck heading northbound make an abrupt U-turn prior to reaching the checkpoint.

Agents observed the driver of the vehicle pull onto the south side of the road and exit the vehicle.

The driver quickly jumped over a barbed wire fence and fled into the brush.

Agents saw several bundles of marijuana wrapped in cellophane in plain view inside the passenger seat and in the bed of the pickup truck.

One hundred individually wrapped bundles of marijuana, weighing 620.7 pounds and valued at $496,560, were recovered from the truck.

Read the rest of this entry »