As the U.S. prepares to open the border to Mexican trucks, safety is not the only concern. Owner-operators in this country fear that low-paid Mexican drivers will take the freight out of their trucks.

Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn., said that Mexicans will slip into the U.S. brokerage system as a low-cost alternative to American independents. "If you can get across the border you’re home free," he said.
Department of Transportation officials are not willing to say that will not happen, but whoever does it will have to work pretty hard to avoid U.S. regulations.
In fact, for Mexican trucking companies, getting permission to cross the border may be the easy part. From the moment he is in the U.S., the Mexican trucker must deal with a regulatory maze as difficult to untangle as a room full of spaghetti.
In the U.S., there are three sets of regulations covering cabotage – the domestic operations of a foreign-based entity. Each set of rules overlaps with the other, and each is enforced by a different federal agency.
Interstate Commerce Act regulations, enforced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, cover a carrier’s handling of international shipments. Customs regulations, enforced by the U.S. Customs Service, govern freight movements. And immigration rules, administered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, control the use of foreign drivers.
An international carrier will have to deal with any or all of these regulations, depending on the definition of “international,” the legal status of his equipment and driver, or the intention of the shipper.
Ken Siegel, a Washington, D.C., attorney for the firm Barnes and Thornburg, offered this example. Suppose a Mexican shipper wants to send a box from Mexico City to New York. A Mexican truck line hauls the box to Houston, where it is to be interlined for the trip to New York. If it was the shipper’s intent, as expressed in a through bill of lading, that the trucker carry the box all the way to New York, then the Mexican trucker can make the second leg of the trip.
But it gets more complicated if the trailer is emptied, repositioned or replaced in Houston. Both the Customs Service and INS can get involved with regulations that will change the handling of the shipment.
Or suppose the Mexican driver runs out of hours in Houston. Under INS rules the Mexican company might not be able to replace him with another company driver, which means a U.S. driver might get the job.
INS rules are strictly enforced, said Siegel – drivers can be arrested and the company can be fined as much as $50,000.
Siegel believes that violations of the cabotage rules will show up at border checks and at roadside inspections. "The shipping papers have to match the DOT registration," he said.
Dave DeCarme, head of DOT’s Maritime, Surface, and Facilitation Division, also expects the enforcement system to work – although it will not catch everyone.
"If it is being suggested that some disreputable companies are going to game the system and violate the law, I guess I can’t dispute that," he said. "You get people who look for illegal ways of doing things."
But, he added, he does not think that a well-run Mexican trucking company is going to take the risk. "I think one should bear in mind that the penalties are pretty severe – you end up being bounced out of the trucking business."
Detailed information on U.S. cabotage regulations is available from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration web site: www.fmcsa.dot.gov.