Mexican Truckers Are Improperly Exempt From U.S. Certifications, OOIDA Claims

The federal government’s program allowing Mexican trucks into the country improperly exempts Mexican truckers from regulations concerning licenses, medical certification and drug testing, an advocacy group told a federal court last week.

The March 14 brief from the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association also said the government did not follow legal procedures for initiating the program.

OOIDA’s brief, part of its lawsuit challenging the Mexican trucking pilot program and seeking to have it stopped, is a reply to a February brief from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which initiated the program and runs it.

“FMCSA’s opposition brief promotes a recurring theme — that OOIDA ignores historical fact and long-standing international” memorandums of understanding (MOUs), OOIDA stated. The group said FMCSA’s “grant of nationwide operating privileges under the pilot program represents a completely new legal environment within which the status of decades-old MOUs must be evaluated.”

OOIDA focused its argument largely on FMCSA’s decisions to recognize Mexican commercial licenses, driver medical certifications and driver drug-testing as being equivalent to American ones, thus allowing Mexican truck drivers to drive in the United States. The agency lacks authority to recognize these driver certifications, OOIDA argued.

In its February brief, FMCSA cited a 1991 agreement with Mexico in which it recognized the country’s commercial license to be valid in the United States. But back then, Mexican trucks were not allowed into most of the U.S., so the agreement must be reconsidered, OOIDA said.

In addition, U.S. law requires all commercial drivers to hold commercial driver licenses, not just licenses that are equivalent to CDLs, the group said. OOIDA also argued that Mexican commercial licenses are not equivalent to American CDLs.

On the issue of medical certification, FMCSA violated the law by declaring Mexican certification to be equal to U.S. standards, OOIDA said.

“Granting an affirmative and permanent exemption for Mexican drivers from the requirement that all operators of commercial motor vehicles have a current valid medical certificate flies in the face of the plainly written words of the statute,” the group wrote.

FMCSA chose to recognize Mexican drug testing as sufficient to satisfy U.S. standards, but OOIDA argued that that is not the case. The U.S. agreed to recognize Mexican standards in 1998, but U.S. drug testing laws have changed significantly since then, the brief said.

“FMCSA describes Mexican drug collection standards as ‘equivalent’ to the ‘substance’ of U.S. rules,” the brief said. “Nowhere does FMCSA assert that pilot program participants in Mexico will comply with U.S. drug-testing rules.”

OOIDA also objected to the procedures FMCSA used last year in setting rules for the program. For example, while Congress required FMCSA to thoroughly explain each Mexican regulation it would recognize as equivalent to an American one, the agency did not do that in every case, OOIDA said.

Nor did FMCSA analyze differences between the Mexican and American regulations it found to be equivalent, OOIDA said.

FMCSA did not respond to a request for comment on the brief before Transport Topics went to press.

OOIDA has joined the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and Public Citizen in suing to block the Mexican trucks pilot program, for which FMCSA issued its first operating authority in October after finalizing the program in July. Those groups filed a joint brief earlier in March, arguing that FMCSA broke several laws when it initiated the program (3-12, p. 27).