How’s your Peterbuilt?

I’d much rather work on the Mex Files, but without donations, I need to put in 50 or more hours a week driving a van. I drive to El Paso three or four times a week, taking I-10 (posted at 80 mph for autos — which includes vans — and only 70 for trucks). I breeze by a lot of U.S. and Mexican trucks between Van Horn and El Paso… and can’t tell the difference. From this morning’s Houston Chronicle:
Lisa J Adams, Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — The American truckers, environmentalists and politicians who are sounding the alarm about the potential dangers of allowing Mexican tractor-trailers onto U.S. interstate highways rarely mention an important fact: Hundreds of Mexican-plated trucks already deliver cargo all over the United States, and have done so for years.

Teamsters union members have waged angry protests at the border and on Capitol Hill, waving signs saying “NAFTA Kills” and “Unsafe Mexican Trucks.”

But more than 1,000 south-of-the-border companies are already allowed to drive cargo beyond the border zone under a long-standing exemption to the U.S. moratorium on Mexican long-haul trucking.

And these Mexican drivers and trucks have had better driver and vehicle safety records than their U.S. counterparts

…

“We are the same as they are. They think that we drink beer, use drugs and drive without sleeping, but this is not true,” said Luis Gonzalez, a trucker based in Monterrey, Mexico, between long-haul trips north of the border.

Gonzalez, 38, has spent seven years hauling cargo direct from Mexico to hundreds of destinations in about 30 U.S. states.

“We have respected the laws here for many years,” Gonzalez said, yelling into a handsfree cell phone over the roar of the road while driving a load of construction steel to Virginia in his American-made 2007 Freightliner.

…

U.S. companies have invested millions of dollars in the business of transferring these goods, and U.S. haulers fear companies will replace them with less-expensive Mexican carriers.

…

Mexico has 1,309 trucking companies that are exempt from the 1982 moratorium — some because they have sister companies north of the border. …

Of the exempted companies, 859 were active from 2003 to 2006, and their drivers and trucks were subject to U.S. inspections for violations that would put them out of service until corrected. The “out-of-service” rates for long-haul Mexican trucks was 21.3 percent, compared to 23.5 percent for U.S. trucks, and the rate for Mexican drivers was 1.2 percent compared to 7 percent for U.S. drivers, said FMCSA communications chief Melissa Mazzella DeLaney.
In case you missed it, let’s be clear what the “controversy” is really about:

U.S. companies have invested millions of dollars in the business of transferring these goods, and U.S. haulers fear companies will replace them with less-expensive Mexican carriers.

That, and… oh yeah…people who should know better (or have no excuse not to know better) would rather resort to racist stereotypes than check their facts.

(Incidentally, the author of that racist drivel was reduced to whining about “satire” two weeks later. Sorry Bubba — that brand of “satire” isn’t usually found outside the pages of of Klan literature or maybe Vdare.com. My main complaint was that the newspaper’s editors seemed unwilling or unable to do even the minimum of fact-checking — and — unable or unwilling to look at Spanish-language reports, or hire people who can talk to Spanish speakers, cannot even remotely claim to provide comprehensive journalistic coverage of their community, or adequately cover local events. Bizarrely enough, the Avalanche ran as an “exclusive” a press release [confirmed by the “exclusive’s author] on their front page authored by a well-known local figure, who does speak Spanish, and has a “Hispanic” surname. Co-incidence?)

For those into the hard-bodied big-boys, “el Guapo” the Mexico Trucker has a nice photospread on the Freuhaufs and Peterbuilts of Juarez. Whooo-hooo!