Making A Run From The Border
From CNS news, via the Associated Press, just today:
The first Mexican carrier is set to roll into the U.S. interior within days, but American trucking union leaders and two California congressmen aren't giving up on stopping the cross-border trucking program. … Washington on Friday approved the first Mexican trucking company, Transportes Olympic, fulfilling a provision under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
My initial reaction is, …unprintable. Having made more trips to Laredo than I can count in the last 8 years, and having seen the quality of the trucks and the drivers that venture into the free trade zone in the Laredo area, I shudder to think what will happen when these substandard, rattle-trapped, smoke-belching dirt bombs start driving throughout the US. You see, many of our major and medium sized trucking companies sell their old, outdated, and disintegrating trucks to companies south of the border, after which the Mexican companies use them to haul freight back into the border ports.
Then there are the drivers. In Laredo, they pass me on the right, where there is no lane, with their right tires up on the sidewalk. They turn left from the right lane, right from the left lane, make u-turns into on-coming traffic, drive 80,000 pound vehicles as if they were dune buggies, eschew turn signals and brake lights, and run each other off the road entirely. They drive as if they are in a third world country, where the rules are suspended. Unless there is a whole different breed of professional driver in Mexico that is totally different from the non-English speaking, careless, half-dazed rejects that I see in Laredo, …and unless said driver is piloting a totally different kind of truck from what I see in places like Laredo, this is going to be very ugly.
As an added bonus, American truckers will ostensibly now be allowed to take their comparatively expensive and meticulously well-maintained trucks into Mexico, where they will be looked after by the Mexican authorities. And in a related news flash, I'm going on the record right here and now that I for one will do no such thing. Period. Fighting for one's country is one thing, and I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. But putting oneself in that kind of jeopardy to bring a load of widgets south of the border would be sheer lunacy. I hope I'm wrong about all this,..but I fear I'm not.
(Photo from USA Today)
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Oct '10
Re: Making A Run From The Border
Without question, I defer to you, Dave, in terms of your experience.
OTOH, if we can require truck driver ed courses, enforce existing and future laws and who knows what else, maybe - just maybe - we can bring their driving habits up to approximate ours...which are far from perfect, witness some of your own comments on Ricochet. Even the Italians have learned to drive in Germany, France and other parts of their neighborhood,
And I agree that driving in Mexico is not worth the risk, though I used to do it on business and for pleasure. Too much like a lottery-cum-shooting gallery today.
And yes, every day I see flatbed-loads of wrecked American cars headed south on I-5 for new llives in Mexico.+
Re: Making A Run From The Border
"OTOH, if we can require truck driver ed courses, enforce existing and future laws and who knows what else, maybe - just maybe - we can bring their driving habits up to approximate ours."
From your keyboard to God's ears, Dave. Everything I see when I go down to that area argues in the opposite direction. As you correctly note, we have problems of our own with professional drivers and the motoring public in general...but they are not even in the same league as the third world mentality that is on parade daily in places like Laredo. Such education will take a lot of time, and I'm afraid corners will be cut and lives will be lost. Again, I hope I'm wrong.
Jun '10
Re: Making A Run From The Border
For a Mexican driver, even if you could afford a shiny new Freightliner with a great custom paint job, you'd probably be a fool to drive it around, unless you have some good family connections in either law or crime. Just as for you, you'd put a target on your back. That's probably the other reason they go for the ugly trucks.
Re: Making A Run From The Border
And right on cue, when I went back to our main page, an advertisement in Spanish appeared. I need to press "1" on my computer...
Jan '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
Several years ago, while riding on a bus to the Mayan ruins at Tulum, I witnessed both truck drivers and even my own bus driver piloting their vehicles in the same manner.
Re: Making A Run From The Border
Ajax Telamônios
Several years ago, while riding on a bus to the Mayan ruins at Tulum, I witnessed both truck drivers and even my own bus driver piloting their vehicles in the same manner. · Oct 22 at 9:08pm
I hope we don't have too many "ruins" here in the US as a result of this bright new initiative.
Jun '10
Re: Making A Run From The Border
Don't you have on road snap truck inspections to pass in the various states you drive through, Dave, or is that only a BC thing?
DMV up here can pull you off the road in an instant up here for mechanical violations, and the inspectors even carry weight estimators to check capacity. I'm not sure you'd like their dictatorial approach, but we live in mountain country, and, as you know better than I, mountain country is not the safest place to drive heavy trucks.
May '10
Re: Making A Run From The Border
Here in California we have the "Air Resources Board" hard at work outlawing diesel engines anyway. But, I'm sure they will make an exception for the Mexican drivers. To regulate them the same as they regulate American citizen drivers would be, well, racist, you know.
Jan '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
I'm in favor of more liberalized trade no matter if it's an X-ray technician in India interpreting images of a patient thousands of miles away in the US or it's people transporting legal things into our borders.
Sep '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
I don't think the cargo is the main issue. I live less than fifty miles from the border and there's hardly a day when there isn't some kind of truck incident on I-10. We rarely get enough information to know if the truck(s) are Mexican but we have suspicions born from experience. The frequency of truck wrecks seems to be much higher lately.
Jan '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
Like Detroit?
Jun '10
Re: Making A Run From The Border
The drug dealers and the Mexican Army can't escort enough drugs over the border as it is, so they certainly aren't going to let Iranian Qud forces carry weapons of mass destruction through. Now they will be able to truck agents and weapons through to their heart's content while TSA VPER team stop random motorists in Tennessee to see if they may have committed a crime.
God Bless America...we need all the help we can get.
Jan '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
How ironic, and how prescient. In today's world, a technician takes the image and a physician interprets it. But with Obamacare, it may just come down to a technician "interpreting" a medical image, and not in just in India, but right here in the U.S. The archetypal "Good enough for government work."
Jan '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
I've considered making a separate post about issues like Dave's lately, see I'm a conservative apostate in that I'm rather skeptical about free trade. While I'm not foolish enough to think that we could ever have a 'fortress America' stance - the failure of the GOP/conservatives to fight: unions, environmentalists, big government in general have left us much weaker in a global market, which only accelerates the flight of manufacturing and shipping (and now ground transport?) outside our borders.
I think the GOP is missing an oppourtuninty in fighting these groups/issues on the basis that we could get some of that industrial base back - we have many advantages here, take care of the onerous tax & regulataory burdens and I'm certain we could dominate once again. With the European banks roiling and looking for safer places to park their money, I'd love to see American businesses (or foreign subsidiaries in the US) be that 'safe' investment rather than our Treasury Bonds.
Edited on October 23, 2011 at 4:10pmRe: Making A Run From The Border
Cas Balicki: Don't you have on road snap truck inspections to pass in the various states you drive through, Dave, or is that only a BC thing?
· Oct 22 at 9:31pm
Yes, we do have the roadside inspections. I've gone through thorough DOT inspections both at weigh stations and as a random roadside event. They have portable scales, they check under the truck for leaks, they measure brake pad thickness, etc. Very detailed. Unless the quality of trucks and drivers from Mexico is a quantum improvement over what I've seen in the border areas, DOT will need to ramp up their inspection program many times over.
Re: Making A Run From The Border
LowcountryJoe and Kowaliczko Tom both raise interesting points on the free trade aspect of the program. I confess to being more an agnostic on this issue, though as a conservative I'm open to empirical data. I support the free movement of goods and services, but am concerned that through its onerous policies, our government encourages the free flight of goods and services away from our shores.
My main concern in this post is the safety issue. Legal goods going to and from Mexico can be assumed to be a net good until experience proves otherwise. But experience has already demonstrated that the means of transporting those goods from Mexico into the US is substandard and unsafe and therein lies my principle concern. My biggest worry in this line of work is for the safety of the motoring public around me. They will be the ones to suffer if the sort of driver that careens about in Laredo is turned loose on the rest of the nation.
Apr '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
Kowaliczko Tom: I've considered making a separate post about issues like Dave's lately, see I'm a conservative apostate in that I'm rather skeptical about free trade. While I'm not foolish enough to think that we could ever have a 'fortress America' stance - the failure of the GOP/conservatives to fight: unions, environmentalists, big government in general have left us much weaker in a global market, which only accelerates the flight of manufacturing and shipping (and now ground transport?) outside our borders.
Bush 41 promised to do this. Clinton promised to do this. Bush 43 promised to do this. Each brought the US a little closer to getting it done, and Bush made a good faith effort with Congress towards the end, which failed. At that point, Mexico slapped retaliatory tariffs on US goods. Under Bush, before the tariffs, the US had a manufacturing surplus with Mexico. There is still a services surplus.
With the tariffs lifted, as a result of the trucking deal, we should return to seeing jobs coming north from Mexico. Still a trade deficit with, eg., India, but we can't fix that by complaining about Mexicans.
Jan '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
Anon
How ironic, and how prescient. In today's world, a technician takes the image and a physician interprets it. But with Obamacare, it may just come down to a technician "interpreting" a medical image, and not in just in India, but right here in the U.S. The archetypal "Good enough for government work." · Oct 23 at 6:21am
Yes, I goofed on that one. Thank you for the subtle slap down. I stand by my theme that free(er)n trade is a good thing, though.
Apr '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
I'm in favor of more liberalized trade no matter if it's an X-ray technician in India interpreting images... no matter the deleterious effects free trade may have on our race to the bottom. When I see a truck with Canadian plates, I think "cool - trade with a peer". When I start seeing trucks with Mexican plates, I will be giving it a lot of space.
Jan '11
Re: Making A Run From The Border
"Bad News" on the Trade Deficit Often Means Good News on the Economy is pretty compelling and has empirical data. But I like the logical and seemingly self evident narratives of Don Boudreaux, like this one => What Are Jobs?, and Russ Roberts, Why We Trade.
No one that I know trades to make themselves worse off. However, because we as consumers choose who we make purchases from, some people who used to produce and sell, may not have the same demand for their products/services in the future. This same phenomena holds true no matter the source of the competition -- foreign or domestic. But if the aggregate consumer is gaining (and getting more value), this is much more important than some producers who face losses...those producers will find alternative ways to generate income.