Senate Blocks Funds for Mexican Truck Pilot Plan

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the Sept. 17 print edition of Transport Topics.
The Senate last week stripped funding for the Transportation Department’s cross-border trucking program from DOT’s budget just days after the first Mexican truck was allowed to deliver freight to a destination in the United States.
A truck owned by Transportes Olympic of Apodaca in the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, delivered a load of steel to North Carolina and returned to Mexico with a load from Alabama later in the week, under the DOT pilot program, The Associated Press reported last week, after Administrator John Hill of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced the border opening Sept. 6.
However, critics of the program on and off Capitol Hill reacted quickly and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), slapped an amendment onto DOT’s 2008 appropriation bill that would remove funding after Oct. 1 for what the agency intended to be a one-year experiment.
Dorgan’s amendment passed the Senate 74-24.
The House of Representatives had voted in July to cut the Mexican truck program’s funding from the DOT budget, making congressional passage of the measure likely.
“I have very strong concerns,” Dorgan said on the Senate floor, “because I don’t think there is any evidence presented anywhere . . . that we have equivalent standards and enforcement with respect to safety.”
He said, “I don’t believe we ought to allow, at this point, the pilot project to go forward that will have long-haul Mexican trucks coming into this country now.”
Hill had said, when he announced the pilot program would begin, that the “long-awaited project will protect public safety on American highways as we work both to save consumers money and help our economy (9-10, p. 1).”
Hill said Sept. 11 the Senate action was “a sad victory for the politics of fear and protectionism and a disappointing defeat for U.S. consumers and U.S. truck drivers.”
Senate Republicans argued that the program should be allowed to proceed, if only to prove whether or not Mexican carriers can meet U.S. standards.
“The Dorgan amendment ignores the numerous safety and inspection standards which are set in place by the Department of Transportation under this demonstration program,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). “In fact, the whole point of the demonstration program is to show that a safe regime for cross-border trucking can exist in a way that benefits both Mexico and the United States.”
The Bush administration threatened to veto the overall DOT appropriations bill, which the Senate passed with an 88-7 vote Sept. 12, but said it would oppose any more limits on the cross-border program.
Hill has maintained that allowing Mexican trucks to deliver in the United States beyond a narrow border zone would not compromise safety on U.S. highways.
Announcing the border opening, Hill said the program was going forward only after the DOT’s inspector general audited the “aggressive steps we’ve taken to ensure safe implementation.”
In announcing the program’s start Sept. 6, Hill said congressional statements about the program’s safety were unfounded.
Citing his career as a law enforcement officer in Indiana, Hill said, “I’m personally committed to safety and I’m not going to be a part of a program that is not at its very heart going to protect the safety of citizens in our country.”
Scott McLaughlin, president of Stagecoach Cartage & Distribution of El Paso, Texas, the first U.S. carrier to gain access to Mexico, said he thought Mexican carriers coming into the United States would likely be the “cream of the crop.”
“I could see a number of large carriers coming up,” said McLaughlin. “I feel very confident there are a number of very competent large fleets that I would have no concern about.”
But critics called the Senate action a victory for safety.
“The American people have spoken, and Congress has spoken,” said James Hoffa, president of the Teamsters union. “We don’t want to share our highways with dangerous trucks from Mexico.”
Robert Shull, deputy director for auto safety and regulatory policy at Public Citizen, said that by passing the amendment, “Congress has made itself clear: The Bush administration must put the brakes on the NAFTA trucks project.”
The Bush administration has been trying since 2001 to comply with the North American Free Trade Agreement, which re-
quires reciprocal cross-border trucking. Since 1982, Mexican trucks have been limited to a narrow area near the U.S. border.
Public Citizen and the Teamsters have joined in a suit seeking an end to DOT’s pilot program. The groups sought an emergency stay, a request denied by a federal appeals court, but arguments on the merits of the case are slated for later this year (9-10, p. 5).
Separately, on Sept. 7, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., to stop the program.
“We believe we have a strong case against what is being called a pilot program, but is actually a stealthily implemented, pre-ordained plan to fully open our highways to Mexican trucks. This is all done in the name of global economics and cheap labor,” said OOIDA Executive Vice President Todd Spencer.