FMCSA Near Goal for Pilot Program Inspections
This story appears in the Nov. 18 print edition of Transport Topics.
The Federal Motor Carrier Administration said it is near the number of inspections needed to evaluate the safety of its Mexican border pilot program, but it remains far below the target number of carriers.
The agency said the there were 3,995 inspections as of Oct. 27, close to the 4,100 that officials said they wanted for its safety assessment during the three-year program. However, 85% or 3,402, of the inspections were done on just two Mexican carriers, the same two that account for 83% of the 8,819 trips made across the border.
Inspection data reflect that only 14 carriers are in the pilot program, which FMCSA said needed 46 carriers for a proper assessment.
“The agency remains confident that the high volume of crossings and inspections will provide statistically valid information about the safety of Mexican carriers,” Duane DeBruyne, an FMCSA spokesman, told Transport Topics. “The number of inspections is already nearly at the number we needed, and there are more than 10 months left in the program.”
The three-year pilot program began in 2011 and will run until October 2014.
Two applications are pending approval, but 17 other carriers have been rejected as participants or withdrew their applications, according to FMCSA’s website for the Mexican truck program.
FMCSA declined to address questions about why so few carriers are in the program and if the number was sufficient to fully evaluate the safety of the Mexican trucks coming across the border.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which tried unsuccessfully to block the cross-border program in the courts, said the lack of participants will undermine FMCSA safety evaluations.
“At some point, FMCSA is going to have to admit that, despite all the red carpet and hoopla, no one came to the party, so there really wasn’t one and never will be,” OOIDA said in a statement. “They didn’t have even one-third of the number of carriers needed in the program to achieve relevant statistics.”
The number of trips made by those in the pilot program ranges from one by the carrier RAM Trucking in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, to 4,033 trips by the carrier GCC Transporte SA de CV of Chihuahua, Mexico.
The second-highest number of trips — 3,255 — was made by Servicio de Transporte Internacional y Local of Tijuana, Mexico.
FMCSA announced Nov. 12 that it’s taking comments on certification for a 15th carrier, Road Machinery Co. SA de CV of Cananea, Mexico. The comment period ends Nov. 22.
As with the inspection data, the border crossing data also reflect that the program is concentrated largely at three crossing points.
According to FMCSA data, the largest number of crossings by trucks in the pilot program was 4,072 at Otay Mesa in California. The second-highest number was 2,512 at the Ysleta crossing in Texas, and the third-highest number was 1,521 at Santa Teresa, N.M.
The cross-border program was launched to comply with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.
OOIDA also said that comparisons violation-to-violation between Mexican and U.S. truckers show that U.S. motor carriers are put out-of-service “far more often” than the Mexican carriers for the same violations.
“The program is an abysmal failure, yet they are bending the regulations and easing enforcement to make the numbers appear sufficient,” OOIDA said. “That is an insult to U.S. drivers that work hard and comply with ever-increasing regulations.”
