Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

But who? Which group of “Glory Hounds” is it?
The Teamster’s are taking credit, obviously

OOIDA, on their afternoon propaganda spot Landline Now on XM 171 said, “OOIDA intends to put a stop to the program now” and refers to the Teamster’s as an afterthought. Only saying they were notified of the intent by FMCSA yesterday.

The Houston Chronicle is reporting the story and reactions from various persons and Agencies and soon, the kooks and crackpots will begin leaving their comments on an issue they know nothing about on that website.

What is the basis for this latest waste of the judiciaries time? The Teamsters once again are claiming;

The Teamsters, along with other highway safety and environmental groups, said the program breaks laws requiring the Department of Transportation to:

• Create a program that yields statistically valid findings;
• Show that U.S. trucks have the same right to travel in Mexico that Mexican-domiciled trucks have to travel here; and
• Reveal the inspection results for motor carriers allowed to drive beyond the border zone.

Having read all documents submitted to the Federal Register by FMCSA and the FMCSA Office of Inspector General, these three points of contention have been satisfied. All one has to do is READ the DOCUMENTS. They are all available for DOWNLOAD HERE.

But as the FMCSA said in a brief statement concerning this latest effort,

The Transportation Department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration dismissed the lawsuit as “without merit.”

I tend to agree with this short succinct statement. They’re simply rehashing old issues which have long been resolved.

Others are still feeding the hysteria, using fear instead of facts to move their agenda forward. The 145 trucks cleared to the project have suddenly ballooned to ten’s of thousand’s

Joining the Teamsters in seeking the emergency stay were the Sierra Club and Public Citizen. “Before providing unconditional access throughout the country to tens of thousands of big rigs we know little to nothing about, we must insure they meet safety and environmental standards,” Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said.

Jimmy Hoffa made this commment in his press release, part of which I agree with

What a slap in the face to American workers, opening the highways to dangerous trucks on Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest driving weekends of the year,” said Teamsters President Jim Hoffa.

It is a slap in the face to American’s who have the sense enough to think for themselves and see beyond all the scaremongering and campaigns of deliberate misinformation being thrown around out here.

Hector Marquez, head of the Mexican Economic Ministry’s Trade and NAFTA Office in Washington, deplored the legal challenge.

“It’s very unfortunate because certainly the governments of Mexico and the United States have put forth a tremendous effort to put in place all the requirements, all the mechanisms, all the personnel and the resources to make this work and to guarantee the security and safety,” Marquez said.

In the end, the borders’ will open. I would think that members of organizations who are seeing their membership dollars thrown away in this manner when they could be used to finance an issue relevant to the industry, something that would help us all, rebel against this waste of time and energy.

It would be one thing if the opponents could present their case based on facts and not conjecture or anecdotal evidence of 20 years past. But they can’t! The proponents of this demonstration project have the facts to back them up.

But in the end, if this project is a success, as I expect it will be, the opponents will not be satisfied and shut up. To the contrary, they will continue to twist the words, the meanings of statistics to continue to place the American public in fear of something there is nothing to fear.

The project will not succeed on it’s merits and the hard work of the participants, but in the eyes of the opposition, success will be because the participants were all hand selected, educated and groomed to guarantee success, an utterly ridiculous assumption.