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OOIDA wants details about future of cross-border pilot project

GRAIN VALLEY, Mo. — In a letter to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration acting Administrator Scott Darling, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has asked the agency to provide details on future plans now that the Mexico cross border pilot trucking program is expiring Oct. 14.

OOIDA has vehemently opposed the pilot program since its inception three years ago this month.

In the letter, the association asked the FMCSA to provide clarification regarding what it called “several concerns about the program’s failure” to meet significant goals set by the FMCSA.

“The data generated by the program clearly shows that the program should not be renewed or made permanent,” OOIDA Executive Vice President Todd Spencer said. “What we would like to know is the agency’s plan going forward and we request that they be transparent about communications with Mexico and analysis of their data, or lack thereof.”

FMCSA responded with the following statement by spokesperson Marissa Padilla: “As the cross-border trucking pilot winds down, FMCSA is in the process of reviewing data from more than 5,000 truck and driver inspections with the goal of developing a path forward to ensure safety on our highways while continuing to fulfill our NAFTA obligations.”

The first truck to cross the border in the current program did so on Oct. 21, 2011.

In the letter, OOIDA spells out a list of concerns about the validity of data collected during the program.

FMCSA had initially said that 46 carriers would need to participate in the program and at least 4,100 inspections would need to be conducted on those carriers in order for program data to be statistically valid.

While there have been a total of 5,455 inspections occurred as of September 24, 2014, there have been only 13 program participants, out of more than 132,000 Mexican-domiciled carriers.

Two carriers alone have accounted for more than 81 percent of all inspections and 90 percent of the 27,016 crossings, while only 5 percent of destinations traveled occurred outside the commercial border zone.

The carrier with the most crossings — Servicio de Transporte International — accounts for 19,014 of those crossings.

A recent review of FMCSA data show Servicio de Transporte International crosses the border multiple times a day using the same trucks, and travel primarily into California.

The letter sent to Darling says that it is OOIDA’s view that because most of the inspection data collected comes from just a few carriers, the data is biased and does not accurately reflect the safety performance of trucks in the pilot, much less the broader Mexican truck fleet.

“More alarming is to note that Mexican motor carriers are not being placed out of service for violations that would warrant such action nor are they being placed out of service at the same rate as U.S.-domiciled trucks and/or drivers for similar violations,” Spencer said. “Such a wide gap in enforcement action raises safety concerns in general, but especially about the program.”

The letter also asks several questions to the acting administrator, among them:

1. What actions does the agency plan to take regarding the carriers and drivers operating in the current pilot program when it ends? What authority would FMCSA have to extend the program? Does FMCSA plan to accept applications from new carriers for cross border operating authority after the program ends?

2. Will FMCSA be establishing a permanent U.S./Mexico Cross Border Trucking Program? If so, under what statutory authority? What timeline does the agency have for moving forward with a permanent program?

3. FMCSA has never released any analysis of the apparent lack of databases in Mexico collecting the same breadth of information about individual driver behavior, including behavior in personal vehicles, which is relied upon to determine a U.S. driver's continued qualification to hold a CDL. Has it ever performed such an analysis? If so, would the agency make this publicly available?

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