CSA 2010 Says Mexican Carriers Unsafe?
So, I was playing around with DOT’s new CSA 2010 rankings, looking for potential customers. I noticed something interesting. The DOT’s new CSA 2010 website is barely functional. You can search one carrier at a time, but you really cannot pull up entire lists of carriers at the moment. For example, I can’t pull up all carriers from Pennsylvania. You can, however, download the CSA 2010 rankings. However, in the downloaded data, it only identifies the carriers by DOT #. So, you have to look up each DOT #, one by one, to find out who is who. So who’s at the top of the Driver Fitness and Vehicle Maintenance categories? The Mexican carriers.
I don’t mean just one or two, either. I mean dozens upon dozens of them. Here, you try it yourself. Go to their “Carrier Search” page. Click on the “Advanced Search” tab. Select Outside U.S., and then pick “U.S.” from the drop down menu. Then search for “Driver Fitness” = 100. What you are doing is searching for American carriers whose Driver Fitness score equals 100, which means the American carriers who have the most unfit drivers. The query returns you 6 American companies.
Do it again, except this time, instead of picking “United States” on the drop down menu, pick “Mexico”. The query returns you 100 Mexican carriers. Now a few things to keep in mind. For whatever reason, the CSA 2010 caps these searches at 100 carriers. So, who knows how many Mexican carriers have a Driver Fitness score of 100? All we know is it’s at least 100. Also, in the total census of motor carriers, American carriers probably outnumber the Mexican carriers 100 – 1. So, statistically speaking, all things being equal, there should be 100 American carriers at the top of the list, instead of 100 Mexican carriers. That’s not the case though. Also, under this CSA 2010 system, all carriers with a DOT number are compared against each other, including U.S., Canadian, and Mexican carriers. 100 means you are the worst, 1 means you are the best.
We can do this again with Vehicle Maintenance. There are 5 American carriers with a Vehicle Maintenance score of 100. Search by “Mexico”, and you find there are 74 Mexican carriers with a Vehicle Maintenance score of 100. The figures for the other categories are reversed. Unsafe Driving: 13 American carriers with a 100 score, 1 Mexican carrier with a 100 score. Fatigued Driving: 5 American carriers with a 100 score, 0 Mexican carriers with 100 score. Drug/Alcohol: 4 American carriers with a 100 score, 0 Mexican carriers.
Conclusion? What does this tell us about the Mexican carriers and CSA 2010? Well, either the Mexican carriers are unsafe, or CSA 2010 is a completely flawed methodology. I don’t see it any other way. The Mexican carriers dominate the high ranges of Driver Fitness and Vehicle Maintenance. This means their drivers are either unlicensed, physically unqualified or don’t speak English. As for maintenence, compared to American equipment, their trucks are junk. Again, that’s what CSA 2010 says. Is that the truth? I guess it must be, as DOT has sworn up and down that CSA 2010 is the most accurate system to identify underperforming motor carriers ever devised.
I would love to hear DOT’s answer on this one. The President and Ray LaHood are telling me Mexican trucks are safe. Yet their vaunted CSA 2010 methodolgy tells me they are not safe. Well, which is it?
Obama Opens Up Border to Mexican Trucks
Last week, the Obama Administration signaled that it will open up the border to Mexican trucks. There have been countless articles on this, here is one from the Dallas Morning News.
This has been going on for so long, I can’t remember the entire history of the dispute. I will try to recap. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), passed I think back in the early 1990′s, said Mexican trucks would be given free run of the United States. Currently, Canadian truckers can deliver and backhaul in and out of the U.S. Mexicans cannot; they must stay within a 25 mile commercial zone of the border. Unless they are going right to Canada, then they can go through the U.S. I think I’m right on that.
The U.S. never has lived up to the NAFTA agreement. There have been pilot projects, concerns about how safe the Mexican trucks are, etc. In 2009, the Congress withdrew the funding for DOT’s pilot project which would allow the Mexican trucks unlimited access to the U.S. President Obama is now reversing that. Who is for it, and who is against it? Well, the Chamber of Commerce is all for it. That is, the large American shippers, as they believe they will be able to ship cheaper due to the increased competition from the Mexicans. Also, many American manufacturers and farmers are for it, not because they want to ship on Mexican trucks, but because their products have been targeted by Mexico with retaliatory tariffs. They hope these tariffs will now be lifted. The American Trucking Association, which mostly represents the mega-carriers, also supports it, although I’m not sure why. Maybe they think it will give them access to Mexican drivers, who will be cheaper than American drivers.
The Teamsters are against it. They believe allowing Mexican trucks and drivers unlimited access to the U.S. will lead to Mexicans taking American jobs. Also, the Owner Operator Independent Driver Association (OOIDA) is against it, largely for the same reasons the Teamsters are. Both groups also, express concerns about the safety of the Mexicans trucks. So, what will happen? Will the Mexicans get to run their trucks all over the U.S.? Well, this has been going on for nearly 20 years, it hasn’t happened yet, so I wouldn’t expect it will happen tomorrow…. if ever.
