Outrage Expressed Over Mexican Trucker Program
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Truckers from around the nation plan to circle the White House this week in a show of outrage over a pilot program to open our borders and jacksonvill'e highways to Mexican long-haul rigs.
President Bush has signed a bill that opens the nation's highways to 18-wheelers from south of the border. Up to 17,000 could soon be on our roads by-passing the sort of scrutiny and safety checks for big-rigs that are already criticized for not being tough enough, and undercutting American driver wages.
The "Truck Out" will be a sort of rolling blockade led by truckers from border states but expect truckers from Florida to join in forming a blockade around state capitals in every state. Drivers will travel at the slowest possible speed to bring attention to the new rules and to show what can happen when the trucking industry is impacted.
More than 5,200 people were killed on our roads in truck crashes in 2005 and allowing trucks from outside the U.S. should not make you feel any safer. Critics, and there are alot of them, say that inspections will be kept to a minumum, such as 15 seconds, there will be no load restrictions, insurance requirements, license requirements for drivers or checks on criminal records.
Mexico has no "Hours of Service" program that restricts how long drivers can stay on the road. As we've discussed on this blog, American drivers are restricted to 11 hours of driving and 14 hour days.
Understandably truckers are outraged.
First, the independent haulers will see their loads undercut by Mexican drivers. Later, Mexican drivers will chip away at produce haulers. Given enough time, Wal-Mart, Roadway, Consolidated and Home Depot will hire Mexican drivers at half the wages of American truckers. Mexican truckers, ever looking for black market loads of people, drugs and products, will create new smuggling routes across the USA.
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