Con-way president has concerns about oversight of trucking in Mexico
Con-way Truckload President Herb Schmidt has concerns about oversight of trucking in Mexico. (Courtesy Con-way Truckload)
By LYNDON FINNEY
The Trucker Staff
3/25/2009
WASHINGTON — At a time when Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has gone to Capitol Hill in an apparent effort to come up with a new cross border trucking plan, the president of one of the nation’s largest truckload carriers says given the present conditions in Mexico, now is not the time to be thinking about opening the border.
That’s the assessment of Con-way Truckload President and CEO Herb Schmidt, whose company since 1985 has operated in the Mexican market, and accordingly gained extensive knowledge and experience with Mexico trade requirements, customs operations and cultural differences.
Schmidt says the lack of oversight in Mexico is only one of the concerns he has about Mexico-domiciled drivers coming into the U.S. and U.S-domiciled truckers driving deep into Mexico.
“The road infrastructure in Mexico is not as good, the rest stop infrastructure in Mexico is virtually non-existent, fueling in Mexico is done on a cash basis whereas in the U.S. it’s done on an electronic basis and there’s virtually no oversight with respect to Hours of Service regulations,” he told The Trucker during an interview last month for an upcoming article. “Whereas in the U.S., logging is required, monitored and audited; log compliance is absolutely critical. That’s not the case in Mexico.”
You can have an HOS regulation on the books, but if there’s no oversight — and in Mexico there is none — you might as well not have the regulation on the books, Schmidt said.
“In reality, no, there is no integrity to any kind of HOS program in Mexico. It’s just run as hard as you’re capable of running and as many miles as you’re capable of running,” he said. So even if a Mexican carrier were to show up at the border with a logbook and that logbook said that they had had proper rest, there’s no one auditing that, there’s no regulatory agency that looks at that, there are no scales where they review that logbook, there’s no oversight by their government, federal, state or local, so what good’s the logbook? If there’s no inspection in Mexico, five minutes before they pull to the border they can make the logbook look any way they want it to. It’s a farce, it’s a smoke screen.”
Security and language are also serious issues, Schmidt said.
“It’s far more dangerous to operate a truck in Mexico than it is in the U.S,” he said.
At least three news sources reported today that LaHood spoke with members of Congress, including Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, D.-N.D., who authored the language included in the recently-enacted omnibus spending bill that killed the cross border pilot project.
Dorgan and other senators and representatives have repeatedly cited safety concerns for wanting the project ended.
However, none has said what the DOT would have to do with respect to the safety concerns to ensure their support of a pilot project.
When asked to comment on the reported meetings and whether the members of Congress had shared with LaHood and the Department of Transporation what would have to be done to resolve those safety concerns, Bill Adams, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, would only confirm that LaHood had been meeting with members of Congress to “get their ideas“ on the Mexican program.
Schmidt offered no pretense when asked if he would send a Con-way driver into Mexico under the present conditions.
“It’s not going to happen, unless it’s a Mexican driver that works for a Mexican company that operates in Mexico, who understands the culture and knows the environment,” Schmidt said. “It’s very easy for the Mexican drivers to operate in the U.S. They are going from a more difficult and challenging trucking environment to a very civilized, organized rest infrastructure, good signage, good roads and good security.”
Schmidt said he likes the current operating system Con-way [and other companies] used to transport goods in and out of Mexico.
Lyndon Finney of The Trucker staff can be reached to comment on this article at editor@thetrucker.com.