Thread: Road Report

Travels
I have just returned from a road trip and I thought I would share some observations and experiences.
First of all, have never seen so many 18 wheelers in the highways, nor have I seen so many pieces of retread littering the road.
I traveled from Colorado to Alabama, to North Carolina, back to Alabama, and home to Colorado. I learned to distinguish the NAFTA trucks by the lack of DOT registration on the cabs. The roads were packed with big trucks and with fuel in the $3.00 a gallon range, I was surprised. I saw a lot of NAFTA trucks and very quickly learned not to stop at any rest stops, many were a little too "busy".
Back to the tires. Pieces of retread tires are literally littering the roads, more than I have ever seen and they can cause big damage if you hit one. I had a flat in AK and the only tire place I could find specializes in big trucks. While I waited I struck up a conversation with the guy behind the counter about all of the truck traffic on the roads. He said they are seeing a lot of Mexico truckers, and his shop is doing a big business in replacement tires.
A friend shared with me that a lot of independent truckers are being put out of business by these guys, they drive with up to four drivers in a truck and go straight through. They bid loads for so much less than American truckers can that American truckers get out to places and can't find loads that allow them to get home. Are American Independent truckers yet one more casualty of NAFTA?
I would advise caution on the roads and don't drive between Claton New Mexico and Raton New Mexico, they have set up a speed trap with about 50 miles of questionably marked "road contruction" construction was only in one little spot about 14 miles in the "zone" and the signs go from 45, 55, 65, at intervals of 100 feet or less with double fines. All revenue goes to Clayton.

OMG.....I just traveled from Huntsville, AL to Biloxi, MS last week and I have NEVER seen so much retread either! I didn't know why there was so much. In a little compact car that stuff is dangerous. What agency do we make complaints to about this?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=50963

More evidence Mexican trucks coming to U.S.
Internal document anticipates increasing volume of traffic

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Posted: July 8, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com


(TTNews.com)
An internal document shows a planned "inland port" in Kansas City anticipates an increasing volume of Mexican truck traffic, despite claims it will be restricted to railroad transports from south of the border.

WND has obtained, via a Missouri Sunshine Law request, an internal spreadsheet analysis prepared by the port project, Kansas City SmartPort, indicating that "with marketing," it projects that in 2010 a high of 508 trucks per day would pass through a Mexican customs facility located at the port. The volume would grow to a projected high of 881 trucks per day in 2015.

As WND has reported, KC SmartPort plans to utilize deep-sea Mexican ports such as Lazaro Cardenas to unload containers from China and the Far East as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement super-highway plan.


The plan would include the hotly contested allowance of Mexican trucks on U.S. roads, WND has reported, but Tasha Hammes of the Kansas City Area Development Council has insisted the port will be restricted to railroad traffic.

Internal KC SmartPort e-mails obtained by WND show that both Kansas City and Mexican officials were concerned that enough truck volume would be processed through the Mexican customs facility to make the project economically viable for Mexico to maintain a customs staff on site.

A Jan. 13, 2005, e-mail from David Eaton, the president of Monterrey Business Consultants in Monterrey, Mexico, who is credited with first proposing the Mexican customs facility, stresses the need for success:


Other communities such as Dallas and San Antonio have requested that Mexican Customs put facilities in their communities. Mexico has determined that our project will be the Pilot and others will not be approved until it is determined that this works … as Ken Hoffman [outside counsel to KC SmartPort] said … we need to make sure this works! [ellipsis in original]
An e-mail dated Jan. 10 from Jose M. Garcia, representative of Mexico's Ministry of Finance in Mexico's Washington, D.C., embassy, asks KC SmartPort President Chris Gutierrez to be more precise. Garcia wrote:


The statistical data show in the study hardly offers us a list of potential users (targets), those that we (Mexican Customs and USCBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection]) must attract and convince to move their cargo through [KC SmartPort] and be cleared by US and Mexican Customs. This list will be used for our promotional efforts.
Replying to Garcia's e-mail, Erendira Rodriguez of KC SmartPort affirmed Jan. 17 that "SmartPort has $400,000 specifically to market the [Mexican customs] facility and the increased exports of U.S. products to Mexico. The marketing will not start until there are more assurances that the facility will open."

KC SmartPort consistently has maintained to WND that the Mexican customs facility was intended to be for outbound exports to Mexico only and would separate from the Lazaro Cardenas-to-Kansas City corridor. In a June 29 e-mail to WND, Hammes of the Kansas City Area Development Council emphasized the distinction:


The proposed KC Customs Port and Lazaro Cardenas to KC Corridor (made possible by KCS [Kansas City Southern]) are two non-related, separate efforts that KC SmartPort is supporting. (One is rail, the other truck. There is no crossover between the corridor and the proposed facility.)
Yet, that contention is inconsistent with a U.S.-Mexico Freight Flow Analysis presented on the KC SmartPort website. According to that study, conducted for KC SmartPort by MARC [Mid-America Regional Council], the dominant mode for hinterland trade export to Mexico was rail.

As the MARC report noted on page 5, "For the SmartPort hinterland, grain products were the largest export commodity group. Manufactured and intermediate goods were the top import commodities." And, again, "Turning to exports by mode, rail is forecast to grow faster than truck which reflects the predominance of bulky and lower value commodities in the export trade with Mexico."

Still, KC SmartPort argues the Mexican customs office is for outgoing trucks only and that only the Kansas City Southern railroad will be used to import goods that enter Mexico via the port of Lazaro Cardenas.

Hammes wrote in her June 29 e-mail to WND: "Mexican trucks will NOT be coming to KC or utilizing the facility."

Even more emphatically, she stated a paragraph later:


The containers that come in through the port of Lazaro Cardenas will enter the U.S. on a U.S. railroad (Kansas City Southern) NOT a Mexican Railroad or via Mexican trucks. The LC to KC corridor is a rail corridor ONLY. As I stated earlier, this is nothing new other than the fact that KCS acquired the Mexican railroad that served the port of Lazaro Cardenas last year.
But the KC SmartPort internal e-mails indicate otherwise. A Jan. 13 e-mail from David Eaton noted: "The authorities agreed that the [Mexican customs] facility will be BOTH TRUCK AND RAIL from the beginning."

Other internal e-mails reveal a determination by KC SmartPort and KC city officials to control their public relations message.

When an Associated Press report hit the wires Jan. 30 revealing a scandal in Mexico that could affect Kansas City's Mexican customs facility, it prompted a flurry of e-mails within KC SmartPort.

A Jan. 30 e-mail from KC SmartPort President Gutierrez to outside counsel Hoffman noted with apparent alarm: "The Associated Press story has reach 30 markets now. Many of the stories have appeared in the last day."

On Jan. 31, Gutierrez broadcast an e-mail to more than 50 respondents, including Kansas City Council members and a Kansas City Southern railroad spokesman, in which he dismissed the AP article, advising that the scandal was only Mexican "presidential election campaigning with one party stirring up things on the other parties and vice versa."




http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=51162

Truck drivers from India to take U.S. jobs?
Union protests plan as attempt to undercut 'hard-working Americans'

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Posted: July 21, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
An American company is recruiting long-haul truck drivers from India with the goal of placing them with U.S. trucking firms.

The Teamsters Union strongly opposes the plan by Gagan Global LLC of Garnerville, N.Y.

Teamsters Union spokesman Galen Munroe told WND the plan "is yet another example of corporations exploiting a visa program to replace highly trained, hard-working Americans with cheap labor from overseas."

Gagan Global has contracted with the Indian state government of Andra Pradesh and its Overseas Manpower Consultancy to run a training school in the Asian country.


Gagan Global CEO Philip Gagan told WND a first batch of 200 Indian truck drivers has been recruited to attend the school in preparation for work in the U.S.

"We are recruiting Indian truck drivers," Gagan confirmed to WND. "We are very demanding on our requirements to get into the school. The requirements are that you have to have five years of heavy driving experience on tractor-trailer trucks, you have to be HIV-negative, have a clean police record, verifiable references that the government in India can verify."

What about the ability to speak English?

"The Indian truck drivers have to be able to read and understand English," Gagan explained. "We like them to speak English. They all speak pigeon-English, mostly what they learned in schools."

How does Gagan Global know that the Indian drivers will be able to read road signs or communicate with other drivers on the road?

"We know that if they can read English and understand what they are reading," Gagan told WND, "then we think they can learn enough English in the four-months training program to be able to be productive in the U.S."

Gagan argued that the reason he created the company was to address the growing shortage in the U.S. for long-haul drivers.

"There's a massive shortage of long-haul truck drivers in the U.S.," Gagan said. "Long-haul truck drivers get home four days a month. There just aren't enough Americans who want to do that kind of work."

A May 2005 study conducted for the American Trucking Association argues that there is "already a shortage of long-haul heavy-duty truck drivers equal to about 1.5 percent of the over-the-road workforce, or about 20,000 drivers."

The driver shortfall is projected to reach 114,000 by 2014. Another 219,000 new truck drivers "must be found to replace drivers currently of ages 55 and older who will retire over the next 10 years and to replace those in younger groups who will leave the occupation."

Teamster Union spokesman Munroe strongly objected. In an e-mail to WND, he wrote:


While there is currently a shortage of long-haul drivers, the problem lies with corporations like Gagan Global that are championing the race to the bottom for American workers. If corporations would treat their employees fairly and offer competitive wages with decent benefit packages, this shortage would disappear.
Gagan Global is in the process of applying to the Department of Labor to get H-2B visas for the Indian drivers. H-2B visas are designed to be issued only when there are no qualified and willing U.S. workers available for the job. Gagan acknowledges that no H-2B visas have yet been issued to Indian truck drivers training in India with his company.

Regarding the issuance of H-2B visas, Munroe wrote WND:


Gagan Global has twisted the intent of the H-2B visa program to fit their desire for a fatter bottom line. The assertion that there are no American workers who are willing to take long-haul truck driving jobs is absurd. It would be more accurate to say they do not want to be exploited by taking poor-paying, long-haul jobs at nonunion companies.
On the company website, Gagan Global explains why Indian drivers are suitable to help address the shortage in long-haul drivers:


We also found that while the average long-haul truck driver makes between $50,000 and $90,000 a year, these truck drivers make far less, and work a whole lot more. So what we have here are people who are never shy of work, extremely friendly and cooperative, and most of all, tough guys who are more than up to handling the American trucks.
Why is Gagan Global so sure the Indian drivers will be able to be successful on U.S. highways? The company website explains the Indian drivers "on an average, have anywhere between 10 and 25 years of experience driving trucks for a living. These drivers have driven long-haul trucks in extreme conditions and terrain and on roads that are anything but like the freeways in the U.S."

The economic incentive for the Indian truck drivers is obvious. Gagan explains:


These [Indian truck drivers] want to work. They want to get into their trucks and work every hour that they are legally allowed to work. They only have a one-year period, plus a one-year extension under their visa to work here. Then they have to go home for six months and apply for a new visa. The Indian truck driver can earn in a day in the U.S. what it may take two months to earn in India. They don’t have families here and they don't care about time-off. If the Indian drivers come here work hard, they can go home with maybe $100,000, which is five lifetimes of money back home in India.
Gagan explained to WND that his company’s goal was not to undercut U.S. truck drivers:


We’re not here to take jobs away from Americans. If they drive for a Teamster organization, they will join the Teamsters. Our Indian drivers have to come into a company and be paid exactly what the American drivers are being paid in that company. They have to receive every benefit and they have to be treated exactly the same. We want them to get the highest paid jobs they can get. We have rejected as clients a couple of companies that have approached us because they want to hire them as trainees and pay them about half as much per mile as they pay U.S. drivers.
The Teamsters' Munroe objected to Gagan Global's program, concluding, "It is time for American companies to invest in the American workforce. Outsourcing will only quicken the demise of the middle class."

A friend shared with me that a lot of independent truckers are being put out of business by these guys, they drive with up to four drivers in a truck and go straight through. They bid loads for so much less than American truckers can that American truckers get out to places and can't find loads that allow them to get home. Are American Independent truckers yet one more casualty of NAFTA?

I've been impatiently waiting for this to happen! This is horrible but expected since they signed the law that allows mex trucks NO inspections or subject to NO American laws pertaining to trucking!!

Does anyone have access to truckers in order to gather information concerning their losses? Are they making any waves? What are they saying? This is sooooo serious.

Trucking runs this country from north to south and east to west. If our people are put out of business for the cheap, unregulated & if memory serves, uninsurred mex trucking, we'll be completely dependent on another country for our goods.

I would say contact the highway administration in those states as yes retread pieces are deadly on the roads. And yes I would not be surprised that truckers are also being underbid by illegal aliens many of whom operate without licenses or fraudulent licenses.

Not to throw stones, but, last year my discover card was compromised. The fraudulent charges were to home Depots for around 8,000.00 and diesel fuel stops for 800.00 in New York state. My credit card never left my wallet.

I know what you mean..while coming back from our trip to Texas, a truck blew a tire in front of us (we were thankfully in the right lane or it could have been worse). Thank God my husband was driving as I might have paniced and wrecked. The truck never stopped! I always try to stay ahead of these trucks because of the fear of something like this happening!

NewMexican:

I'm planning a trip with a friend down to Santa Fe. Have to go over Raton pass.

How far down is Clayton with this speed trap?

You don't go through Clayton enroute to Santa Fe you just say on I-25 all the way. If you are going to Amarillo or Oklahoma City you would turn at Raton and go SE to Clayton. Watch out for the retead, we hit some in DC in a rental car and it was 600.00 in damage. Have a great trip!!!

NewMexican:

Thanks for the info!!