One thing that is not mentioned - the current administration is once again pushing a pilot program under NAFTA, to start allowing Mexican trucking companies to cross the border and make deliveries throughout the U.S.
Congress slammed the brakes on this 10 years ago because the Mexican trucks and drivers came nowhere close to meeting our environmental regs, safety regs, weight limit regs, and driver training requirements. And this situation has not essentially changed in the last 10 years.
The added cost of the extra equipment and changes that have to be made to a Class 8 truck to meet the '07 regs amounts to roughly $10K per vehicle, an additional $4K on just the engine alone. And in one part, the article was dead on - the trucking companies ordered Class 8 trucks like they were hotcakes last year, we were slamming 220 trucks per DAY out of the Freightliner Cleveland plant alone. Now that only '07 trucks are available, the orders have dried up to the extent that we've laid off third shift back in March, only worked one week out of four in April May and June, and have only been running one shift per week/8 hours per day since the first of July. In the meantime, the Mexico plant which is primarily building non-'07 compliant trucks for markets outside the U.S. is still running full blast.
So the EPA is forcing the U.S. trucking industry to bear all these additional costs, which are eventually going to get passed on to the end customer, while at the same time the administration is wanting to give the Mexican trucking industry a free pass on the same requirements? If I were fond of conspiracy theories, I'd say this was nothing less than an effort to run the U.S. trucking industry out of business in favor of their cheap-as-possible Mexican counterparts.
If the situation goes forward as is, I can see several results - other businesses that depend on the trucking industry will literally stampede to make use of Mexican trucking companies due to the lower cost of their not having to comply with U.S. regs. For lack of business and customers, U.S. based trucking companies will try cutting costs any way they can, including cutting driver pay to a minimum and turning a blind eye toward any corner-cutting on legal requirements, such as the limit on the number of hours per day they can be on the road. Most independent truckers will simply be run out of business. In the end, it will be the same story as with many other industries - many trucking companies will simply move their base of operations to Mexico, so they can avoid compliance with U.S. regs and thus incur lower costs and stay in business.
|
