Thanks to exemptions in the North American Free Trade Agreement, there are a lot more Mexican trucks on U.S. roads than most people think -- and they're safer than most people would expect. That's according to a report in Friday's Washington Times.

NAFTA "grandfathered" about five Mexican trucking companies that were operating in the United States before 1982, when the ban on Mexican trucks went into effect, according to the paper.
The safety record of those grandfathered companies may boost one argument of those in favor of opening the border as called for under NAFTA: Long-haul Mexican trucks would be much safer than the aging, poorly maintained local drayage trucks that shuttle freight back and forth across the border and cannot legally operate outside a narrow "commercial zone" in the United States.
The Times points to Baja Intercontinental Transportes, based in Tijuana, Mexico. One of the grandfathered companies, it has operated in the United States since 1973, hauling produce between Tijuana and Fresno, Calif., 400 miles north of the border. Baja's trucks have failed 18 percent of the 53 inspections U.S. authorities have conducted over the past two years. That's well below the 24.3 percent average failure rate for U.S. companies.
The paper says while there are not any official statistics tracking the safety records of these Mexican trucks operating in the United States, "all but one of the companies whose safety records could be obtained by The Washington Times had inspections failure rates well below the U.S. average."
The North American Free Trade Agreement also exempted 160 other Mexican companies that are private fleets for companies such as Frito-Lay, Pillsbury and McDonald's. However, the National Private Truck Council told the paper that few of the companies use the authority, because they would not be able to legally take a backhaul from the United States into Mexico. Private fleets in general have an above-average safety record because they don't want to jeopardize the public image of their brand names.