Mexico Trucker Online

Federal safety officials Monday ordered Iguala BusMex and Angel Tours Inc. to cease commercial operations while last week's fatal accident in North Texas is investigated.

After last weekend 3 bus crashes, resulting in 20 fatailities and more than 50 injuries, FMCSA seems to have gotten the message.

Iguala BusMex Inc. was awaiting approval for a federal license when one of its buses crashed near Sherman on Friday. The company is run by Angel de la Torre, who also operates Angel Tours Inc., which was forced to take its vehicles out of interstate service June 23 after an unsatisfactory review by federal regulators

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has stopped granting licenses nationwide for new bus companies as the agency tries to get its computer systems up to speed to cross-reference applicants properly, administrator John H. Hill said Tuesday.

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Investigators examine a Harrah's Casino bus that crashed in in Tunica, Miss., Sunday morning.

So what’s going on here? Are we so fixated on legally operated, safe Mexican Cross Border trucks that we totally ignore the commercial bus industry in the United States?

On the heels of Friday morning deadly crash in Sherman Texas that killed 17 and injured more than 35 people when the recapped steering tire blew out on a charter bus being illegally operated by Angel Tours of Houston, we have two more incidents involving motor coaches.

A casino bus also was involved in an accident Sunday in Mississippi that killed three people and injured more than 30.

The bus belonging to Harrah’s Tunica was carrying 43 people when it overturned at an intersection in Tunica, authorities said. Rain was falling at the time but Mississippi Highway Patrol Sgt. Leslie White would not speculate on the cause of the wreck.

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FMCSA oft controversial Mexican Cross Border Demonstration Program is at a milestone with 30 Mexican carriers participating with 101 trucks enrolled in the program.

Notice was published as required in the Federal Register and the public was given ample time to comment as required by law.

It would seem that Senator Byron Dorgan’s continued attempts to shut down this legal and so far successful program are not stopping qualified Mexican carriers from entering the program.

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The governing idea behind [cref nafta-for-dummies NAFTA] is to remove trade restrictions so as to encourage the free-flow of goods and services across the North American continent. Along the U.S. – Mexican border, however, the reality is that the ground transportation of such goods remains highly congested and drawn out. Long-haul trucks from Mexico are restricted from operating in the U.S. except within designated commercial zones located in border-cities such as San Diego, El Paso and Brownsville. At these sites, the contents of a truck must be unloaded and transferred onto a domestic carrier in order to continue to their final destination. Authorities estimate that this obvious kink in the supply chain costs U.S. consumers $400 million a year.

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Alabama State Troopers are enhancing revenue in that state using the vague provisions of FMCSA Regulation 391.11 (b)(2), the controversial rule requiring CDL holders to be conversant in English

This rule leaves it up to the individual officer or inspector to determine, in his mind, what is “sufficient”.

This can be open to abuse and a persons personal prejudice due to the vague nature of the regulation.

FMCSA Regulation 391.11 (b)(2) Can read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records

The question that begs to be answered in this case is, did the trooper expect this driver to speak perfect Oxford (Al) english? Perhaps so.

Manuel Castillo was driving a truck through Alabama hauling onions and left with a $500 ticket for something he didn’t think he was doing: speaking English poorly.

Castillo, who was stopped on his way back to California, said he knows federal law requires him to be able to converse in English with an officer but he thought his language skills were good enough to avoid a ticket.

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Yesterday was the tenth month of the Mexican Cross Border Pilot Program and an assessment of the performance of the participants reveals no surprises, at least for me. For those who oppose the program, the results might be an eye opener disputing Jimmy Hoffa’s claims of “dangerous Mexican trucks”. Ironically, it coincided with Byron Dorgan’s ultimately futile attempt to stop the program.

Methodology

Obviously, we took the USDOT numbers assigned to the participants and ran them through the FMCSA SAFERSYS database. All records are current through 6/20/2008.

Next, we choose the date range (09/11/2007) which was the date the first truck rolled across the border, to present. Despite organizations like OOIDA using a broader range of dates which encompass Mexican drayage operations to skew the data in their favor, this date range is all that is relevant to assess the performance and compliance of the participants.

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