Mexico Trucker Online

New Kentworth T660's await delivery to Mexican fleets at the KW dealership in Nuevo Laredo

Today is the long anticipated vote on HR-6630 (To prohibit the Secretary of Transportation from granting authority to a motor carrier domiciled in Mexico to operate beyond United States municipalities and commercial zones on the United States-Mexico border unless expressly authorized by Congress.)

Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters were early off the line sending their propaganda spam messages, once again maligning the truth. I got mine about 9 this morning.

We need your help! Today the U.S. House of Representatives will consider H.R. 6630, a bill that would prohibit the Secretary of Transportation from allowing unsafe Mexican trucks to cross beyond the borders of the currently permitted commercial zone unless Congress authorizes it. This important piece of legislation would put a stop to the dangerous Mexican truck pilot program that the Department of Transportation (DOT) has been operating despite Congress already passing a law last year that made it illegal to do so.

I spent the morning trying to think of a manner to tell Jimmy Hoffa to F$%k Off in a manner a thug would understand.

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I couldn’t help but break out laughing, or as Stevie Sommers puts it, “chuckle”, listening to OOIDA and LandlineNow on XM-171 last Thursday, I think it was, when they brought up the almost dead subject of the Cross Border Program.

I think Mark Reddig was talking with their Washington lobbyist about the status of the program and the comment was made;

All of us at OOIDA are working full time to see this program is stopped in it’s tracks!

Yep, 10 months into the program, and they’re working full time to stop a program that has been successful beyond even what I had imagined.

There have not been the tens of thousand of dangerous and broke down Mexican trucks invading the United States as promised by Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen.

The drayage trucks used within the border commercial zones have not ventured beyond that zone nor have they applied for acceptance into the program by the OP-1MX application process, as Todd Spencer of OOIDA would have you believe.

The trucks participating in the program have done so safely and without apparent accidents and incidents, contrary to what Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters would have you believe.

And yes, it appears participation is less than expected. And there could be a reason for that.

Mexican carrier executives are no different from their American and Canadian counterparts. They are in business to make money. If they don’t see the opportunity, they are not going to participate.

Fernando Paez of Transportes Olympics of Apodaca Nuevo Leon is a prime example. He has contracts with RegioMontano Steel of Monterrey to service their customers in the US and to return to Monterrey with raw materials for that customers. This he has done and done so with great success. And has his entry into the US freight market caused any economic hardship on American carriers or depressed the rates? Doubtful! Melton Truck lines hauls the same product and their terminal in Laredo Texas is full of trailer with the same product.

The carrier out of Mexicali, Transportes Rafa, with an account to provide a customer in California’s Central Valley with fruit baskets. How many American carriers are lined up to take this business away from the Rafa Bros.? Not many!

It was said by all the critics that these trucks would be used to transport drugs and illegals into the country and indeed, some of the South Arkansas tin hat crowd suggested nuclear materials for weapons. Guess what! Non of this has happened and won’t!

Sure, there have been stories of trucks being stopped and discovered to have drugs or illegals in them. But it has been proven here and on official government sites that the drugs and illegals come across the border by other means, stockpiled in safe houses until an American trucker, looking for a little quick cash, is stupid enough to accept a load.

Some are suggesting that FMCSA will try to extend the program by a year or two in order to bolster the statistics. Personally, I would think a year without accident or incident, coupled with the Mexican governments own safety statistics (yes, they do have databases) would be enough to prove the opposition to the program is a moot point.

And keeping in mind, after a successful year of the program, and I measure success by the no accident or incident statistics, it is going to be extremely difficult to justify pulling the plug on the program.

The big myth in all of this is that the Mexican carriers can operate cheaper and therefore undercut US rates which is not the case. Sure, they pay their drivers a little less than US carriers, but they also pay those drivers a per diem, cover their Social Security payments and have other perks that go with the job.

And when you consider the additional expenses required to enter into the program, obtain US operating authority, the high cost of US insurance, their costs of operations are equal to or slightly more than ours.

It’s all good business and those that would ignore that fact are the foolish ones. But we all know that OOIDA and others will continue to throw around false information and we will be here to debunk the myths with facts backed up by photos. That has been the success of Mexico Trucker.

Not to think I am totally down on OOIDA. They have apparently done some good fighting the new CARB restrictions in California. Their support of the TRUCC acts moving through Congress at the moment is a good thing for all the good they will do any of us. It is a panacea to a problem with roots deeper than these bills address. But on the issue of Mexican trucks, they are dead wrong and continually prove this by throwing out all the exaggerated misinformation.

We’ll all sit back and wait, but in my mind, we have much more important things to worry about at the moment.

OOIDA’ executive vice president Todd Spencer, continues to try and convince the public, the Courts and Congress that the companies participating in the Cross Border Demonstration Project re using the same trucks as the border shuttle fleet or drayage operators.

He insinuates this fleet is ill maintained, worn out junk rigs that have no place on US highways. But of course, he’s wrong as we’ve proved time and again on this site.

CANACAR, the Mexican equivalent of the ATA, with about 150 member carriers is working to change this perception and encourage member carriers to upgrade their drayage equipment

Whether or not they are having any success or it is simply the life cycle of the trucks, many Mexican carriers with drayage operations are indeed, upgrading their cross border shuttle trucks and retiring the old JB Hunt and Schneider cab overs we’re so used to seeing.

I always have my digital camera at the ready whether I am in the big truck or in my personal vehicle and shot some rigs around Laredo Texas as well as on a recent return from a weekend in Monterrey.

Draw your own conclusions. I’ve seen worse trucks around the US in truck stops and on the road.

[Show as slideshow]

OOIDA immediately responds with unsupported allegations against the company.

In what has become a common practice with OOIDA, they have once again gone on the attack against a participant in the Cross Border Program, citing statistics not in existence to further their fear mongering about non existent safety issues.

The latest target of their attack is AVOMEX INTERNATIONAL SA de CV, an importer of avocados, and other agricultural products.

This is not the first time OOIDA has selected this company to spotlight with erroneous information. They were after them while the initial PASA’s were being performed.

OOIDA makes this claim.

OOIDA’s Director of Regulatory Affairs Rick Craig pointed out that in the 12-month period ending Sept. 21, 2007, Avomex’s five trucks at that time had amassed 206 total violations in 172 inspections. That averages out to just slightly more than 41 violations per truck.

From Sept. 22, 2007 through Jan. 22, 2008, Avomex received 71 more violations in 41 inspections – well on pace to top the 206 violations in the preceding 12-month period.

What is the actual numbers, the truth?

According to data available on the FMCSA SAFESTAT database, the same one OOIDA claims to have used to make their claims, AVOMEX recieved, in a 30 month period prior to 2/22/2008, 374 vehicle inspections, resulting in 43 Out of Service Orders. That breaks down to 12.43 inspections per month or roughly 2.5 inspections per vehicle. A more realistic number than the ones cited by OOIDA. The OOS rate for the 5 trucks over a two and a half year period was 1.43 per month.

The bulk of the OOS orders occurred in 2005 and 2006 with only 10 occurring in 2007 and to date, only 1. Keeping in mind that these occurred as this company was conducting business under OP-2 authority restricting them to the commercial zone of the border.

This means that of the 374 inspections, this company passed, 331 of them without problems.

And what were these dangerous and unsafe violations that got the trucks shut down 43 times, and in OOIDA’s opinion is why the program should be halted? Let’s take a look.

CHECK THE STATS FOLLOWING THIS LINK

I can’t make a determination based on this data nor can OOIDA. Keep in mind this company pulls agricultural products and from what I am seeing, most of the trailers in the inspection reports are US registered and licensed while the power units are licensed in Mexico.

Also keep in mind, this is one of OOIDA’s little tricks they have been pulling since the program was announced. Each time Todd Spencer makes reference to a Mexican cross border truck, he wants you to believe that the participants in the Cross Border Program will use the same trucks they use in their drayage operations and this is simply not true.

And this is the proof. No conclusions should be made on any of these companies until sufficient program performance data is available from participation in the program.

But as the spokesman for FMCSA said before, “These are the types of tricks you pull when the facts are not on your side”!

For a year, OOIDA, as well as the Teamsters, has been filling the media with gross exaggerations, misrepresentation of facts and twisting the numbers to make them fit their agenda.

Well, it’s payback time, and boy, are they whining!

As they say, you play, you pay! Looks like OOIDA has gotten themselves blacklisted by the FMCSA Public Information Office. Pobrecitos!

Since August of 2007, OOIDA media (Land Line Magazine and “Land Line Now” on XM radio) have been on the blacklist. Our honest and passionate criticism of the president’s Mexican cross border pilot program placed us crossways with the administration and had us blackballed by public affairs officials within the U.S. Department of Transportation.

That is how Mexico Trucker came into being. Listening to people like Steve Sommers and his daddy, the Trucking Bozo offering “expert” opinion on a subject they knew nothing about, Mexico. And to this day and this moment, I am still looking for the illiterate third world country with bad highways and drunk and drugged truck drivers.

Speaking of Bozo and to make the point, anyone hear his show today? Besides talking about how all roads in Mexico were in bad condition, he went on to advise a caller that an American trucker crossing the border woud be inspected by the Mexican Customs agents, who would see the big fancy CB radio on the dash with the 5000w kicker. He would radio his friends in the Federal Highway Police who would stop the trucker and confiscate the equipment. What total and utter bullshit!

Never happened to me. My Suburban, my VW Jetta nor my classic Mercedes 300 Trubo Diesel have ever gotten a second glance from any of them. And when I drive them, they are equipped with a Garmin Nuvi GPS and XM Radio. Not to mention a few other “toys” I carry with me.

But back to the subject. Perhaps OOIDA should change their strategy concerning the Cross Border Program and debate on the merits, and not on the crap they think up to inflame the passions of the general public.

A nice idea, which I doubt will ever happen.

What a year 2007 was.

The war in Iraq continued and the casualty count is now well over three thousand and for what? To allow KBR civilian contractors and others to get rich scamming the government as those who were recently indicted in Afghanistan have shown us.

Blackwater security employess used Iraq as their personal killing fields, putting themselves above the law, and now it appears, they will succeed.

And how about the new “training” facility being built in San Diego county just a few klicks north of Tecate Mexico? That ought to make the hard core anti immigration folks amongst us happy as hell! Wonder how long it will be until we hear of “accidental” killings in that part of the border.

And of course, February brought us notice of the intent of the FMCSA to COMPLY with OUR AGREEMENT made under the NAFTA accords. Imagine that! A President willing to do what was right. And oh, did it piss off a few people!

The Mexican Cross Border Program, Mexican Truck Pilot Program, Cross Border Demonstration Program, call it what you will!

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