“Are they the lucky ones [the dead]? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? We’re a long way from home. We’ve jumped way beyond the red line, into un-chartered space. Limited supplies, limited fuel. No allies, and now, no hope? Maybe it would have been better for us to have died quickly … instead of dying out here slowly, in the emptiness of dark space.” –Commander (later Admiral) William Adama.

The above comes from a terrific scene at the end of the first episode of the now-famous “Battlestar Galactica” series on the Sci Fi Channel, now (sadly) entering its fourth and last season. It’s a moment where the remnants of the human race are fleeing their homeworlds, laid waste by the Cylons — a race of robots originally created by mankind to be servants. It’s a point where Adama (played by the awesome award-winning actor Edward James Olmos) is trying to rally the survivors, addressing their fears head-on — without any sugar coating — so they will pay attention when he lays out his vision for their shared future.

(Right now, Jim McNamara at Volvo Trucks North America is no doubt rolling his eyes at all this, as he dealt with this kind of stuff when we worked together as reporters back in the day. Sorry Jim — it’s yet ANOTHER sci-fi rant!)

What I like so much about this scene — and all the episodes that follow — is that you get than intense sense of heroism at the last stand, a firmness of character (and no one portrays it better than the raspy-voiced Olmos) that’s unwilling to give up, even in the face of overwhelming odds. And it’s not all about space battles and such; much of the show dwells on how the main characters deal with the bitter little things that still go on despite the dark days they plow through — thieving, lying, jealousy, hatreds, whining, etc. All of that still goes on — as it does in real life — and creates a lot of drag on Adama’s efforts to save humanity.

And the lead characters — Adama included — are all very far from perfect. His first officer (XO) is a crabby drunk, his son Lee has an ego a mile wide and is actually put in jail by his father for a time, and the civilian president frequently clashes head-on with Adama’s military judgement. The vice president, Gaius Baltar, is probably the worst of the lot — a genius scientist who is secretly a Cylon collaborator. (Talk about juicy plot lines!) Yet through it all, Adama is resolute — despite being outgunned and infiltrated by human clones grown by the Cylons, he keeps pushing forward, keeps focused on saving what’s left of mankind.

A lot of that bears closely to what trucking must deal with today — the struggles with driver pay, hours of service rules, wait time, shortage of drivers, cost of fuel, cost of equipment, etc. — against the backdrop of our ultimate fear: terrorism by truck. It comes and goes as a lead issue, but it’s always there — a frightening five-ton elephant lurking in the room. Truckers rightly fear a hijacking-turned-suicide attack, but the potential for that scenario is much smaller than what I call the Tim McVeigh option: rent or buy a cheap truck and turn it into a rolling bomb in the privacy of your own home.

McVeigh, as you may remember, was a decorated former U.S. soldier whose twisted racist philosophies convinced him and others to pack a Ryder rental truck full of agricultural chemicals, then detonate it next to the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 — killing 168 people, including many children in a day care center located within the structure. Executed June 11, 2001 (eerily three months to the day before the Sept. 11 attacks), McVeigh’s actions still cast a long shadow: a homegrown terrorist (and a bronze-star winner to boot) committing one of the worst crimes in our nation’s history against his fellow citizens.

And he used a truck to do it, don’t forget that. I remember talking with Larry Strawhorn, the former vice president of engineering at the American Trucking Association, about the potential to hijack trucks and use them as weapons of mass destruction. I vividly remember Strawhorn’s answer: “Oh, heck, terrorists don’t need to hijack a truck. That’s too much work! They can just pay cash for some cheap second- or third-hand tractor and trailer and turn it into a bomb on an old farm somewhere.” That blunt analysis still haunts me.

So despite the everyday issues the trucking industry must deal with, we can’t forget about the big one — terrorism. And while we must remain watchful despite the daily tribulations on our plate, we mustn’t give in to hopelessness and despair. Remember, too, a lot of folks had their eyes on the Sept. 11 hijackers for a long time, especially the instructors who taught them to operate big planes, who rightly were VERY suspicious of men paying cash that didn’t want to know how to take off or land jumbo jets — just fly them. We just must make sure the rigors of the day don’t overwhelm the silent warnings we may encounter some time in the future.

“The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well and doing well whatever you do.” –Longfellow

When Peter Dannecker, director of loss prevention for the A. Duie Pyle Companies based up in West Chester, Pa., received the 2007 National Safety Director Award from the American Trucking Association this week, I really wasn’t surprised — because A. Duie Pyle is just one of those fleets that keeps knocking it out of the park time and time again in the trucking business.

Dannecker is responsible for the development and execution of his company’s safety programs governing almost 2,000 employees, 700 drivers, 14 terminals and six warehouses throughout the Northeast and the ATA’s award recognizes his — and the company’s — forward-thinking approach to driver training and selection.

For example, back in 2005 A. Duie Pyle put together what it called a “CDL hazmat endorsement subsidy program,” designed to reduce the cost of getting fingerprinted and obtaining background checks for all its drivers, said Peter Latta, at that time the carrier’s president (Stephan O’Kane later took on that role in 2006).

“Paying up to $150 to satisfy regulations that appear very complex so they can haul hazardous materials does not seem like a worthwhile option to many drivers,” said Latta at the time. “That’s why we are determined to carry some of the burden on their behalf.”

A. Duie Pyle also formed its own truck driver training school last year to give warehouse and other non-driving employees the chance to get behind the wheel — a strategy that’s rarely been seen since J.B. Hunt shut down their famous in-house school in 1997. Pyle decided to open a school so they could create drivers ready to handle HazMat shipments the way the carrier believed they should be — and it’s proved to be quite a success.

What’s perhaps the biggest indicator of the success of these and other driver-focused strategies at Pyle? Fewer accidents. Under Dannecker’s leadership, Pyle saw a 49% improvement in its preventable accident rate from 2000 to 2006. And that record helped the carrier earn a slew of safety awards over the years, from the New York State Motor Truck Association, New Jersey Motor Truck Association, Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association , as well as the ATA President’s Trophy in 2005.

And A. Duie Pyle doesn’t just seek to improve safety or the skills of its driver corps. Despite being a regional fleet, they went ahead and developed their own in-house maintenance system, designed to fit the needs of their 12 shops (which employ about 76 technicians). It can be pretty scary thinking about undertaking an IT invesment of this scale but Jim Minske, the carrier’s director of maintenance, told me a while back the benefits have far outweighed any potential risks.

“Our system is tightly focused on making sure vehicles get the proper PM at the proper service interval, and can be managed in accordance with performance and maintenance cost, not by pre-set years or mileage markers,” he told me. “We’re trying to get away from retiring our equipment solely on the basis of how old it is or how many miles it’s run,” noting that Pyle’s equipment is usually retired after five to six years, during which 500,000 to 600,000 miles are covered.

“We want to move away from a hard-and-fast retirement date based on age or miles, and instead look at how a truck is performing on the basis of maintenance cost,” he points out.

It’s refreshing to see fleets that think out of the box like this — and to see them rewarded for their efforts. So hats off to you all at A. Duie Pyle — keep swinging for the fences.

“Be faithful in small things, because it is in them that your strength lies.” — Mother Teresa

Had an interesting chat with Allan Berger, vice president of Arriba Equipment Service down in Houston TX, by way of email not too long ago. We were talking about tires — specifically about the life cycle of trailer tires — when he shared a telling experience gained back when he worked as VPof equipment at Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI), which used to be one of the largest refuse fleets in the country until it got bought out by rival Allied Waste several years ago.

Allan told me that his shop found that, in certain operations, the front tires on the forward tandem axle on short wheelbase low COE front loaders like the Mack MR wore twice as fast as those on the rear tandem. In addition, in some operations, the tires on the right side of both tandem axles wore almost twice as fast as on the left side. That perplexed him and, as it cost his fleet money, he set out to find out what was going on.

It turned out that in city operations, BFI’s trucks were routed to drive down one side of a street and to keep making right turns into and out of stops, thus always pivoting on the right rear tires and rolling on the left rear tires. The trucks were then routed to pick up the same way when driving back on the other side of the street. The short wheel base helped maneuverability but prevented rolling into turns, i.e. the tires were being scrubbed. While this provided a more efficient collection operation, it came with a price.

Yet in country operations where the pick ups were more widely located, these trucks made as many right hand as left hand turns going down the same roads — it made sense on these routes not to double back — so tire life was greatly improved. However, the lower collection density meant more miles had to be driven and more fuel burned to collect the same amount of trash as a city collection route.

Talking with Allan about these particular findings from his refuse fleet days reminded me just how important the small details are in the trucking business in general — from vocational operations up to the OTR guys. Gain a tenth of a mile per gallon in fuel efficiency for tractor trailers and suddenly an OTR fleet is saving potnetially thousands of dollars a week. Manage the wear rate on your trash truck tires and again lots of money can get returned to your bottom line.

That’s why I think the fleet manager’s job is even more vital today than in the past, despite many who might feel that job description may be heading for extinction. “Bean counters” living in the carpeted finance office are never going to be able to look at uneven tire wear on a truck and figure out what’s causing it — and solving that kind of puzzle can mean the difference between saving or losing money in the trucking business. Because as so many fleet managers past and present have told me and keep telling me, this is an industry where pennies matter — save a few here and there, and suddenly the whole balance sheet can shift from red to black.

Thomas “Tommy” Lawlor is one of those people reporters like me love to meet. A gregarious Irish taxi driver with a colorful past, Tommy became a critical transportation linchpin during the last days of a family trip to Ireland — getting myself, my brother and father through the twisting streets of Dublin (that good nation’s capital) to the difficult Portmarnock golf course to the north of the city and back again, and eventually out to the airport for our flights home.

Driving with Tommy gave me an insight into just how important local knowledge is when navigating city streets — in this case, a city that traces its offical founding all the way back to 988 A.D. As a consequence of that ancient history, Dublin’s streets are very narrow in more than a few places, with many one-way boulevards that can confuse and frustrate the average driver if you don’t have the all-important mental map in place like Tommy does.

“You’ve got to know where you’re goin’ an’ ya have to have no fear, lad,” he told me. “Many of these streets date from medieval times, so they can be narrow and confusing.” It helps that taxi drivers get to use the bus lanes in the city, so they can avoid the long lines at Dublin’s many stoplights. It also helps to keep an eye on the weather too, as Dublin — located on the river Liffey — is only a stone’s throw from the Irish Sea and gets pummeled by rain pretty frequently.

“We had 62 days of straight rain here this summer,” Tommy said. “That makes driving interesting. You alss have to keep your eyes on the seagulls, for if you see lots of them gathering in the parks and other open spots, you know a big storm is coming in from the sea.”

It’s fascinating, too — rain or shine — to be driving next to buildings that are hundreds of years old. A village called Eblana once stood here, a place dating back to the 2nd century, until the marauding Vikings came in the 9th century and established modern day Dublin as a raiding base for their longboats. The hill on which Dublin stands provided a good defensive point as well as easy access to the river, making it an ideal base of operations for them.

Though King Henry II of England eventually drove the Vikings out in 1171, the city stayed small — peopled by only 9,000 — until the vicious Oliver Cromwell arrived in 1649, turning Dublin into a haven for protestants fleeing the religious wars in Europe.

In 1800, the Act of Union officially joining England and Ireland pushed Dublin into decline, as it suffered (as did the rest of the country) from second-class status imposed by British rule. The city later became a pitched battlefield in 1916 during the Easter Uprising, with the General Post Office being shelled by British artillery to drive out Irish rebels. The subsequent execution of those rebels changed the population’s view of those rebels, however, and it gladly became the capital of the Irish Free State in 1922 after the Irish war of independence (fought from 1919 to 1921) freed the south of Ireland from British rule.

Today, Dublin is the political, economic, and cultural capital of the Republic of Ireland, with double decker buses, commuters, freight trucks, and (yes) taxi drivers like Tommy plying its jam packed streets every day. It’s a lot more compact than the cities we are so used back here in the U.S., however, making it quite a tough place to drive — and that’s before you throw in driving on the left hand side, of course.

Still, it’s beauty and history are something to behold, even if it does make the driving more than a little challenging — which is what makes drivers like Tommy so valuable. “Once you know your way around, it’s a piece of cake,” he said. Maybe … we’ll see on my next trip back.

So we’re screaming up the N-52 “highway” from Limerick to Mullingar, crossing the midlands of Ireland at 100 kilometers per hour — what that is in miles per hour, I don’t want to know. Because it’s far too fast for me, let me tell you.

While the Ford Focus we’re in — piloted skillfully by my daredevil brother, Michael “Mario Andretti’ Kilcarr — holds the road just fine, it’s the road I have problem’s with — a narrow, twisting ribbon of asphalt that has absolutely no shoulder. In fact, both sides of the road are hemmed in closely by hedges and stone walls — walls that are 1,000 years old in some cases, so they won’t be ditched for a highway expansion project anytime soon.

The truckers here must navigate these ‘highways’ with cabovers pulling 48 foot trailers for the most part — contending with the cars and many farmers who pull loads of peat along the road puttering along at 20 to 30 kph. Not a receipe for easy driving, let me tell you.

And the N-52 is a HIGHWAY mind you — get down into the Ring of Kerry, and two cars can’t pass side by side, and that’s before you start worrying about the bicyclists and donkeys in the way. And truckers must find their way around these terrifying strips of asphalt because no other way exists to get the goods people need to live to their final destination. There’s almost nothing like these roads back in the U.S., thank goodness.

Ah, but it’s a glorious land all the same — rich and green, with many places still untouched by the tides of times. Eight hundred year old ruins dot the countryside (even sharing spaces with new subdivisions) and it just adds to the flavor of this special place.

So good luck to Ireland’s truckers — may your journeys be safe on your tough roads. I, for one, have found them too much for me to handle, to say the least.

So I am here in Ireland, the land where 75% of my ancestors came from. And I can see from Dublin’s airport all the different trucks used to support Erin’s economy here.

European trucks are of course very different in many respects from their U.S. counterparts — not traveling nearly the distances American truckers do, for example — but are similar as well. Hours of service, lack of respect for truck driving as a career … these troubles and others dog our European cousins, too.

As I travel about here, I’ll drop a line now and then to record those simialrities and diffeences. Until then, Erin Go Bragh and good health to all.

“Shut your eyes … and think of somewhere …” –Snow Patrol

I’d like to share with you a speech given by James E. Queen, group vice president-global engineering for General Motors, back in May to the new graduates of Lawrence Tech (Oh, to go back to the start of summer! It went by all too fast this year).

In his speech, entitled “The Journey Ahead: A Long and Winding Road of Boundaries and Choices,” Queen laid out a vision that the assembled graduates might want to follow.

“Yours will be a journey down a long and winding road of smooth surfaces, pot holes, freeways, country roads, city streets and to a large extent, it’s going to be a journey of boundaries and choices,” he said. “How you define your boundaries and what you choose to involve yourself with, both personally and professionally, will certainly define the value of your contribution to your future employer, society and to a greater extent, the world.”

Let’s face it, said Queen, we live in a world filled with opportunities, yet it’s fraught with insecurity, and arguably is simply not sustainable. “So when you’re thinking of what you want to do with your lives, I urge you to set even broader national and global boundaries, in order to have a broader array of choices and to ultimately maximize the impact you have on the world,” he said. “Put another way that most students of physics will understand, w = f x d, or for our less technical guests, work equals force times distance. Others have helped you get to where you are today. Now it’s your turn to help others and for that matter the world in general.”

Queen firmly believes that service is more important than self, adding that, in the total energy equivalent of life, only you can determine how much is potential energy and how much is kinetic or realized energy.

“So don’t waste your potential – get kinetic,” he said. “It’s important not to get too upset when you hit a pothole or, quite frankly, [get] too full of yourself when you’re on cruise control on a sunny day heading down a smooth surfaced freeway. There are going to be good days and bad days and you need to react to all of them with a large dose of humility. Trust me, the bad days won’t be as disastrous as they seem and the good days won’t be as grandiose as they appear.”

He noted they’d be entering a world that has become increasingly global and interdependent; a world that is inherently good, but also one that can be bad and ugly, too. “In the future, change will come even more rapidly and the opportunities to contribute, quite simply, will be endless,” he said.

“We need more technical people to plan and build infrastructures necessary to support emerging regions and communities with better roads, housing, food, transportation and health care systems,” Queen added. “There are people who create problems and there are people who observe and talk about problems. They simply don’t have the ability, tools or inclination to implement solutions. You are not those people. Be part of the solution — for you have the tools to do more than just talk about ‘how bad it is.’”

Good and strong words for everyone, I think.

“One should be able to see things as hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I remember it like yesterday, though it’s now six years gone: the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Shanksville. The utter panic as I frantically sped off to gather my children from preschool and daycare, wondering what to do next. The agonizing wait as my wife, sitting in her office in Alexandria, Va., literally could not get home — roads were packed solid not only with cars but thousands upon thousands of walkers as Washington D.C. evacuated on foot. The days and nights that followed, the skies empty and silent except for the occasional roar of combat air patrols.

The worst part came from realizing I knew people in the places hit by the terrorist planes — especially in New York City, where a good reporter and former co-worker, Gordon Forsyth, worked in one of the Trade Center buildings. Was he OK? It took a few days and phone calls but I finally reached him — he’d just arrived at the office when the attacks started and so was one of the lucky ones, able to turn around and escape the madness.

I remember talking to him about that day much later. I didn’t want to, in many ways, because I could only imagine the horrors he saw — the people jumping from the burning trade center, watching the towers fall, all the awful things I only witnessed on the small, sanitized TV screen. He dealt with the smells, the screaming, being packed cheek by jowel on the ferries that carried so many away from the city. The worst of it all, in some respects, came after finally reaching home in New Jersey. That’s when he went down to the train station, the place where he left for work — and gazed upon row upon row of parked cars whose owners were never returning. It felt more like a cemetery than a parking lot, Gordon recalled — giving him a cold feeling it would take a long, long time to shake. To this day, I still admire how he dealt with it all.

For months after the attack it felt like the worst kind of waiting game — waiting for the other shoe to drop, the next terrorist strike. That feeling still hasn’t left me — we’ve got supplies in the basement, clothes packed in a duffel bag, ready just in case for what I do not know. You go on with life, of course, but you recognize that it’s forever different now — that your neighborhood, place of work, where you’re visiting that day could be potentially be on the target map of some terrorist cell and not even know it. Living so close to Washington, D.C., feelings like those are just part of the landscape now.

Yet it isn’t all hopeless gloom and doom, and should never be. Our eyes are open now in this country as to what can happen when it comes to terrorist activity; they will never be completely shut and ignorant again (at least that is the hope). We owe it to ourselves, the 3,000-plus that died that terrible day, not to be so soundly asleep at the wheel ever again.

“There’s strong. And then there’s Army strong.” –U.S. Army recruiting advertisement

You’ve probably seen and heard that line more than a few times of late; probably thought that it’s a catchy marketing phrase. Well, it’s more than that — because I’ve met people that are living proof of the truth contained in those words, folks like Sean and Diane McEndree.

I first met them back in August 2005, with Sean still recovering from wounds sustained in combat over in Iraq. A veteran solider turned truck driver, Sean re-upped after 9/11, joining the 96th Transportation Division out of Ft. Hood, TX. “I saw all these young kids getting ready and I knew they’d need every experienced hand they could find,” he said. His employer at the time, National Carriers, helped him get back into the Army in 2003 so he could help out – going back in as an E-4, the same rank McEndree reached when he left the service the first time – finally getting deployed in February 2004.

In August 2004, his convoy got ambushed as it paused to dismantle a roadside bomb. Perched on the back of an armored tandem axle deuce-and-a-half guarding the rear of the convoy, Sean opened up with his twin 50-caliber machine guns as bullets, mortars, and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) rained down on them.

At some point, his truck took a direct hit — he can’t remember from what — and the explosion threw him 30 feet. His good friend and platoon Sergeant, Barry Meza, dragged Sean to safety and got him medical attention –and none too soon. “I took a lot of shrapnel through my back from the explosion,” Sean recalled. “It broke three of my ribs, shredded one lung and parts of my liver.” Awarded the Purple Heart, he needed a year to recover from his wounds — rehabilitation helped along by his wife, Diane, an ex-soldier herself — but those injuries also marked the end of his Army career.

His good friend, Sgt. Meza, however, suffered a worse fate: Returning to Iraq for a second tour, Meza died in combat Dec. 19, 2004.

When I met the McEndrees back in 2005, Sean had gamely returned to trucking as an owner-operator for National Carriers behind the wheel of a sharp black Peterbilt dubbed “Fallen Heroes.” With his friend Meza’s name emblazzoned on the nose, Sean wanted to turn his truck into a “rolling memorial” to those who’d lost their lives in Iraq. He wasn’t sure how, but just by talking with him, you knew he and Diane would find a way. They’d also just learned Diane was pregnant with their first child together (they each have three from previous relationships) so things were really looking up.

Then fate decided to deliver Sean another roadhouse punch.

As a “bull hauler,” Sean shuttled big steers cross-country. But in September 2005, a new guy he worked with forgot to set the pin in the trailer door and a monster bull got loose, stomping Sean all to hell — putting him back in the hospital with a separated hip and broken femur. Laid up for a year and half, the McEndrees had to sell their truck and Sean feared his driving career was really over for good this time.

Yet, in true Army fashion, they didn’t give up. After moving back to Copperas Cove, TX, Sean “got that twinkle back in my eye” and started looking to drive again. After hooking up with Freymiller Inc. hauling refrigerated goods as a company driver (”Hauling freight that doesn’t move on it’s own and try to kick you,” he stressed) Sean and Diane revived their old operating authority – Veterans Express LLC – and got a new truck on a lease-purchase plan in January this year, which promptly went into the hands of the Chrome Shop Mafia (made famous by the show “Trick My Truck” on the Country Music Television channel) for a four-week, $39,000 paint job and show truck upgrade.

Various veteran groups – from the Order of the Purple Heart to the Wounded Warrior Project – along with other sponsors chipped in funds along with $5,000 of the McEndree’s own money to pay for his rolling memorial, appropriately called “Fallen Heroes 2.” Sean wasn’t sure what the design on the truck should look like, so he talked things over with Ryan “Ryno” Templeton, the famed painter with the Chrome Shop Mafia. “I gave him some of my ideas and he ran with it,” said Sean. “And it turned out better than I could ever hope.”

With Barry Meza’s name again on the nose, Sean’s new Peterbilt features a mural of Arlington Cemetery with a giant American flag at half mast — all set against an eye-popping sky blue background. The Purple Heart medal is prominently displayed on the sides of the sleeper (as it should be) and the interior is decorated with American flag curtains and coverings hand stitched by Diane — all of this happening while they raised their newborn son Sean Jr. and took care of their other children.

It’s quite a truck but Sean and Diane aren’t done yet, as their goal is to put together his own fleet — “Three trucks ought to do it,” Sean told me — and eventually give Fallen Heroes 2 to Sean Jr. (Who apprently is already calling it “my truck.”) All of this while still dealing with the aches and pains from two sets of injuries that should’ve put him down for the count. Needless to say, I am rooting for them to accomplish that goal.

For more photos of Sean and Diane’s rig, go to www.fallenheroessemi.com. You can also drop them a line at tinylilred33@hotmail.com.

And if you see him on the road or parked somewhere — “Fallen Heroes 2″ is hard to miss — make sure to say hello. He’s doing a great job representing America’s armed services out there.

After much gnashing of teeth and rhetoric, Mexican trucks are on their way. Last night (about 9:05 p.m. to be precise about it) the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration held a press conference by phone with reporters to announce the start of its long-delayed cross-border trucking pilot program, which will operate for a year. Transportes Olympic, a 30-truck fleet based outside Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, gets the dubious honor of being the first Mexican carrier to win approval under the program to operate on U.S. roads.

Only, they are NOT the first. In fact, they are number one thousand three hundred and one.

Didn’t know that, eh? Guess what — Mexican carriers have been operating on our roads for TWENTY FIVE YEARS people — something many of you out there probably already know, but came as news to me. You see, back when trucking was regulated, about 1,300 Mexican carriers applied for and received U.S. operating authority — throughout the U.S., mind you, not the 25-mile commercial border zone, established much later on. And when trucking got de-regulated in 1982, the now-defunct Internstate Commerce Commission grandfathered all of them in — meaning they got to keep their U.S. operating status.

In the press briefing last night John Hill, FMCSA’s chief administrator, said about 800 of those original 1,300 Mexican carriers are STILL operating on our roads — free and clear, don’t have to go back and participate in all the safety checks being demanded under the pilot program. He isn’t greatly concerned about them, either, as FMCSA surveys of Mexican carriers operating in the 25-mile border zone — surveys that include trucks from those 800 carriers — found they have an average out of service (OOS) rate of 21%; a little less than the 22% OOS average racked up by U.S. carriers.

Now, say what you will, but it seems suddenly really ridiculous that there’s been all this screaming about 100 Mexican carriers being appoved for the FMCSA’s pilot program when 800 of them are here free and clear, having to deal with far less scrutiny than what these new guys are undergoing. Heck, a U.S.-based carrier can get rolling once they’ve secured insurance and operating authority, with FMCSA verifying they meet safety requirements over an 18-month period. The Mexican carriers in this pilot project must get all of that done on the front end — vehicle inspections, driver drug tests, driver English-speaking tests, etc., etc. — before one tire is allowed to turn on our asphalt. Hey, some U.S. carriers out there could use that level of scrutiny.

Listen, I still think we should have tabled this whole thing for another decade or so — the hue and cry is only going to get worse in the days ahead, and frankly, I wouldn’t want to be in a Mexican truck driver’s shoes right now. All the rhetoric out there is going to fire up the wrong kind of people and lead — I fear — to race-baiting and physical confrontations. I hope and pray that doesn’t happen, but I’ve seen this kind of thing before.

But here they are … and here they’ve been! Now we must make sure that not only are Mexican trucks safe, but our own as well, as U.S. carriers are now crossing the border the other way. We’ve actually been doing this cross-border stuff for over two decades now, with little incident. Let’s hope we can keep it that way.