The Mexican government, while maintaining a threat of trade sanctions against the United States, didn’t officially react last week to the recent vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to bar Mexican trucks from the nation’s highways.

Professional gangs of armed hijackers in some areas of Mexico constantly threaten cargo security for trucking firms, according to Mexican security experts.

Differences in regulations, paperwork requirements and enforcement can pose dilemmas for U.S. carriers attempting to compete in Mexico, say carriers that operate in both countries.

MEXICO CITY — U.S. less-than-truckload companies are redefining the traditional truckload market in Mexico by applying U.S. industry standards, while working to overcome infrastructure barriers and cultural differences, according to spokesmen for several U.S.-based carriers. BR CLEAR=all>

Thirty-some years after the women’s movement opened the doors to many vocations traditionally considered “male,” young women still look askance at driving big rigs for a living.

The Coalition for Customs Automation Funding likes what it sees in President Bush’s nomination of Robert C. Bonner, former administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to become U.S. Customs Service Commissioner.

The White House has lifted the long-standing ban on foreign investment in U.S. trucking and bus companies doing international business.

Since the advent of drug testing in trucking and in business in general, a whole cottage industry devoted to hoodwinking the tests has evolved. And the most popular vehicle for marketing products designed to mask telltale signs in urine samples appears to be the Internet.

The data that the federal government and its experts relied on to develop revisions for the hours-of-service regulations bear little resemblance to the real world of trucking, a University of Chicago researcher charged in a new study.

Some truck cargo crossing U.S. land borders at Laredo, Texas, and Port Huron, Mich., will bypass secondary inspection lanes during a 60-day Customs Service experiment on automated processing beginning this month.