Thread: Mexican trucks needed for U.S. cross-border pilot program

Mexican trucks needed for U.S. cross-border pilot program

U.S. officials urge Mexican companies to apply

Written by
Sandra Dibble
6:27 p.m., Feb. 24, 2012

TIJUANA — Concerned over low participation in a cross-border pilot program for Mexican long-haul trucks, U.S. Department of Transportation officials on Friday urged more Mexican companies to apply, saying their enrollment is critical to the success of the three-year demonstration project.

“The lack of participation is what’s going to keep us from being able to say, ‘It’s OK to open the border to them,’” said Anna Amos, director of safety programs for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency that is administering the pilot program.

The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA, was signed between Canada, the United States and Mexico. But full implementation of the trucking provision has been delayed repeatedly due to opposition from the Teamsters Union and other U.S. critics who contend that Mexican trucks pose a safety hazard on U.S. highways and cost U.S. jobs.

During Friday’s meeting in Tijuana at a hotel near the Otay Mesa border crossing, the U.S. officials said that without significant Mexican involvement, the U.S. Department of Transportation won’t have enough data to show that Mexican trucks can operate safely.

“It is what is going to help us collectively get beyond this 20-year logjam in implementing NAFTA,” said Marcelo Perez, an investigator with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

After Congress suspended a previous cross-border pilot trucking program in 2009, Mexico’s government retaliated by imposing tariffs on $2.3 billion in American goods, including agricultural products. The sanctions were lifted last year with the launching of the new pilot program in October, but few Mexican trucking companies have signed up.

So far 21 Mexican companies have sought to join the program, Perez said, and two have received final clearance to cross the border: Transportes Olympic of Monterrey and Moises Alvarez Perez of Tijuana. The first began making crossings in October, but the Tijuana trucking company has yet to cross with a shipment, Perez said.

Members of Canacar — Mexico’s trucking chamber — who attended Friday’s session complained that Mexican truckers face more stringent requirements than their U.S. counterparts under the current pilot project.

“The new program has way too many limitations, and that’s possibly why there aren’t enough carriers” that have registered, said Alfonso Esquér, Canacar’s representative in Tijuana.

Juan Carlos Muñoz Márquez, the national president of Canacar, added: “It is very complicated, it’s very expensive, and to tell you the truth, it hasn’t brought us any benefit.”

Muñoz is owner of Transportes Castor, one of Mexico’s largest trucking companies, which has not applied for the program. Like many owners of Mexican trucking firms, he works in tandem with a U.S. company — Castor Transport LLC — that takes his shipments and makes deliveries across the United States.

When the previous pilot project was suspended in 2009, “no one was able to say that Mexican carriers are any less safe than U.S. carriers,” said Perez of the Federal Motor Carrier Administration. “The only thing they could say was that the project did not have sufficient data to come up with a statistically valid deicision. That’s where we find ourselves today, needing you to participate in this program so that we don’t come up with another draw.”

Mexican trucks needed for U.S. cross-border pilot program | UTSanDiego.com

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