Three More Mexican Fleets Pass U.S. Audits

This story appears in the May 21 print edition of Transport Topics.

Federal officials said they have completed safety audits for three more Mexico-based carriers wishing to operate in the United States, but participation in the cross-border program remains far below what the U.S. government has said is needed to properly gauge the safety of Mexican carriers.

In a May 11 Federal Register notice, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said Higienicos y Desechables del Bajio, Servicios Refrigerados Internacionales and Transportes Del Valle De Guadalupe each passed an audit, and public comment was now being accepted.

Only three other Mexico-based trucking companies have been approved for the program since it began in October, well short of the 46 FMCSA has said it needs in order to successfully judge the safety of Mexican carriers, which is the goal of the three-year pilot program.

Those carriers had crossed into the United States 29 times as of last week, a small fraction of the 4,100 crossings FMCSA said it needed.

Earlier this year, FMCSA en-couraged Mexican carriers to join the program. The agency did not return calls to Transport Topics seeking comment by deadline.

In its Federal Register notice, FMCSA acknowledged that Higienicos y Desechables del Bajio and Servicios Refrigerados Internacionales initially failed to disclose affiliations they have with other trucking companies. However, FMCSA said it “confirmed that the companies affiliated with these two carriers are in good standing or are inactive.”

The agency also said it “determined that neither of these companies is involved in any effort to hide previous non-compliance or safety problems.”

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which has long been a staunch opponent of the cross-border program, told FMCSA it should have rejected the two applications because of the omissions.

One of Higienicos y Desechables’s partners owns Comercializadora Mexicana Trading Inc., a U.S.-based carrier, but it did not disclose the relationship, despite FMCSA asking for such information.

“I am prepared to show that HYD is not a fit applicant and should not be allowed to operate in the United States,” OOIDA President James Johnson wrote in a letter to FMCSA. That omission makes the application “materially incomplete,” and it ought to be rejected under federal regulations, he wrote.

Similarly, Servicios Refrigerados Internacionales did not tell FMCSA it owns U.S.-based SRI Trucking.