The Laredo “Experience”…

Posted on May 07, 2009 - 4:47pm by Marshall J. Gruskin in Trucking

I find myself once again heading down to Laredo. On board I have 11 tarped pallets of steel coils headed across the border to a manufacturer that USED to be in the US that USED to employ American workers. Bedford Park, IL, the place where I picked up the load, USED to be a “hotbed” of trucking activity. There were trucks everywhere, either backed up to a dock to be loaded or waiting in a long line in the streets, waiting their turn. No more. Certainly not today. The streets are empty and the docks dormant. The unemployment rate in Bedford Park is 9.20 percent – the US average is 8.50%. Recent job growth is ZERO and jobs there have decreased by 6.70 percent.

So, I want to tell you a little story, sad but true, as the saying goes. Every time I go to Laredo, I have to report to the terminal. I have wait on line to get inspected. The equipment, my truck, the trailer and the load get checked. I have to open up all my side boxes, my tarp and chain boxes so the “inspectors” can see that I don’t have anything “illegal.” If I bobtail from the terminal to let’s say, Wal-Mart or Wendy’s, and then return, my truck has to be inspected again. Of course, there is the paperwork to be filled out along with my certifying that I don’t and won’t do this or that. When I leave with a load there is another inspection and more paperwork. Further up the road I have to pull into the US Customs inspection station where I have to tell them I’m a US citizen, have a drug dog sniff my truck and swear that I have no passengers.

As a truck driver and a US citizen I have to put up with all this nonsense. I need to have everything legal and in order – license, medical card, log book, etc. The last time I left Laredo with a load – if Obama has his way and his administration “re-engages” NAFTA/cross border trucking – a Mexican trucker working for a Mexican carrier will deliver the load instead of me. And further up the road North of Encinal TX two sunburned men in raggy clothes run with their water bottles out from the bush across I35 disappearing on the other side of the interstate. No border patrol around. I was looking right at them. Two more “illegal’s” have arrived. Welcome to the United States amigos. Perhaps the US should stop using the Bald Eagle as a national symbol and use a picture of a seesaw. End of story.