Trucking Headlines
BREAKING NEWS: First certified Mexican truck crosses U.S. border
By Randy Grider


Fernando Paez owns Transportes Olympic, which on Thursday, Sept. 6, became the first Mexican carrier to receive authority from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to operate in the United States under the agency's new pilot program.


At approximately 12:50 a.m. (CDT) Saturday, Sept. 8, the first Mexico-domiciled truck authorized under the Bush administration’s pilot program to transport cargo within the United States cleared federal inspections at the U.S. border in Laredo bound for North Carolina.

In light of the special occasion, border agents had moved the late-model Freightliner owned by Transportes Olympic of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, to the front of the line for an extensive inspection.

After more than two hours of inspections, driver Luis Gonzales headed north on I-35 and was expected within 30 minutes to cross the 25-mile commercial zone that has been the boundary for Mexican trucks since the United States closed its border to its southern neighbors in 1982.

Despite scattered protests from some American trucking and labor organizations since the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gave the green light to the pilot program Thursday night, the truck crossed without incident, reports Jorge Arboleda, editor of Tuscaloosa, Ala.-based Transportista magazine. Arboleda rode along with Gonzales as he left Monterrey, Mexico, at about 6 p.m.(Transportista, a Spanish-language trucking magazine, is owned by Randall-Reilly Publishing, which also publishes eTrucker, Overdrive, Truckers News, Commercial Carrier Journal and other trucking publications.)

Forty-year-old Fernando Paez, owner of Transportes Olympic, was both excited and a little nervous Friday afternoon.

“We’re only taking one truck just in case the Teamsters burn one of them,â€