Mexican trucks roll toward U.S.
Teamsters keep up opposition as rigs prepare to move beyond border area

Sep 7, 2007
By MEENA THIRUVENGADAM and SEAN MATTSON
San Antonio Express-News


LAREDO — A day after being cleared to operate in the United States, Nuevo León-based Transportes Olympic spent Friday preparing to make a journey beyond a 25-mile zone along the Texas border.

José Gil, Transportes' logistics director, said a truck carrying steel bound for Wilson Hills, N.C., left the company's headquarters Friday evening.

But as owner Fernando Páez readied one of two big rigs authorized to operate anywhere in the U.S., the Teamsters, Public Citizen and other groups continued to denounce the Department of Transportation program that opened the border for the company.

"We believe it's clear that DOT is breaking the law by going forward with this program," Teamsters spokeswoman Leslie Miller said.

Teamsters President James Hoffa promised that the union would "do everything in our power to put a stake through the heart" of the cross-border pilot program, which would satisfy one of the North American Free Trade Agreement's last outstanding provisions.

The union has a lawsuit pending against the program in a San Francisco appeals court. That court last week denied a Teamsters request to stop the program immediately.

Despite American truckers' protests, Páez is optimistic. Páez's company was granted operating authority in the United States late Thursday.

Mexico, in turn, granted El Paso-based Stagecoach Cartage and Distribution permission to operate south of the border, a privilege U.S. trucks have never had. That lack of access to the Mexican market led the United States to deny operating authority to Mexican trucks after 1982.

Mexican trucks operating in the U.S. before then were allowed to continue making deliveries anywhere in the country. Up to 1,300 Mexican trucking and bus companies have had operating authority in the United States for the past two decades, DOT spokeswoman Melissa DeLaney said.

The department could not say how many of those companies were solely in the trucking business or how many of their trucks were operating on American roads.

"We've had Mexican companies' trucks showing up at various places in the U.S. for years, and there's never been a problem," said Brigham McCown, a partner in the Winstead law firm of Dallas.

McCown is a former chief counsel to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency overseeing the cross-border trucking pilot.

"The stakes of letting a few more Mexican trucks in are lower compared with the black eye the U.S. would suffer by refusing to do what it said it would do under NAFTA," McCown said.

Under NAFTA, truckers from Canada, the United States and Mexico are to have access to one another's roads.

Under the one-year program, up to 100 Mexican and U.S. trucking companies would gain access to one another's roads. A maximum of 540 Mexican trucks are expected to operate in the U.S. under the program.

McCown said opposition groups still have options to fight the pilot, but they face a tough road. The Teamsters lawsuit could still stop the program, or legislators could freeze the funds that would be used to administer it, he said.

Those efforts, however, could take months to gain enough traction to shut down the pilot program.

"With the border already open, it's going to be harder to shut it," McCown said.

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