Thursday, May 24, 2012

Mexican truck program failing, just as Hoffa said it would

We told them so. 
Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports the cross-border trucking program with Mexico isn't exactly popular. Over 8 months, only 33 Mexican trucks traveled beyond the border zone as part of the program. Reports Bloomberg:
A cross-border trucking pact that ended a 17-year trade dispute between the U.S. and Mexico last year may unravel unless more Mexican big rigs start crossing the border under a U.S. Transportation Department pilot program... 
A U.S. Transportation Department official said yesterday that only 33 Mexican trucks have crossed since the U.S. opened its southern border to long-haul trucks in October. 
“Participation is not where we want it or need it to be to make it a viable program,” said William Quade, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s associate administrator for enforcement and program delivery. “The agency is extremely concerned about not having sufficient data.” 
The U.S. must evaluate the pilot program to determine whether it would be safe to open the border to all truck traffic. So few Mexican trucks are participating that it may not be possible to have a statistically valid sample for the analysis, Quade said yesterday at a meeting of the agency’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee in Alexandria, Virginia.
Go back to Oct. 11, 2011, when the program was announced. Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said,
This pilot program will be a fiasco, just like the last one was.
Looks like he was right.