Monday, September 10, 2012

Mexican truck program still a failure

Just as Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa predicted: The pilot program to open the border to Mexican trucks is turning out to be a complete failure.

There aren't enough trucks in the program -- only four at last count. And the government isn't making sure drivers can understand American road signs -- or that they aren't carrying cargo illegally.

Don't take our word for it. Read what the U.S. Transportation Department's own inspector general wrote about the program.
  • Federal officials are testing to see if Mexican drivers understand English road signs by letting them answer questions about them in Spanish even though they're required to respond in English.
  • Federal officials completed only 52 inspections of Mexican trucks beyond the border zone. They need to complete 4,100 within 3 years (the program is more than a year old). That means only 1 percent of the necessary inspections were completed within the first year of the program.
  • The federal government is not electronically monitoring trucks for cabotage (carrying cargo between two points within a country by a vessel registered in another country), though it promised it would.
The Packer Daily publication reported on the audit and concluded the cross-border trucking program's future is iffy.
The future of the cross-border pilot program for Mexico-based trucking companies is unsure at best, according to a federal audit.
Can't say we didn't warn them....