As we’ve reported several times, Congress passed and the president signed into law a bill that ended the Mexican Cross-Border Trucking Pilot Program.

Yet we still have people going on and on about how we “have to allow” the trucks to roll, we “have to open the border,” all because NAFTA says so.

Well, that’s crap. And it leaves out something, a truth every trucker needs to pass on to their members of Congress.

A trucker called us recently and said, “Once they (Mexico) do all the stuff they’re required to do, then we are obligated to allow cross-border trucking.” I think that’s pretty accurate.

But here’s the deal – the trade arbitration panel that made that statement, that we are obligated – also said that we (meaning the United States) have every right to enforce on every truck and trucker from Mexico entering this nation every single regulation American trucks and truckers face.

In fact, the panel indicated we could hold them to a higher standard than U.S. drivers.

Well, folks, they don’t meet our equipment standards. They don’t meet our hours of service. They don’t have an MVR or CDL database listing violations. They don’t have the same insurance requirements. They don’t have any – not one – qualified and certified drug lab for testing drivers, and not any drivers who are tested. They don’t have the same cargo securement regulations.

Want me to keep going? I could do that for hours.

Until they meet every one of those regulations, we have every right to refuse those trucks entry on an individual basis, or as a group.

Those are our rules. We didn’t make them up just for this. We’ve enforced them on our drivers for years. Canadian drivers come into our nation and follow those same rules, and have for years. And fair really is fair.

Don’t let your members of Congress get away with saying that NAFTA says we have to do this. NAFTA says we have the right to enforce our laws on our soil.

The last cross-border program didn’t do that. The next one must.

That being said, how long do you think it’ll take them to put together that database? Just that alone will delay cross-border trucking for 10 to 20 years.

Enough said.

In Chicago, like everywhere else, they’ve dressed up their red-light enforcement cameras as ‘safety tools’ instead of the revenue generators they really are.

Now some of the city moms and dads want to make things even ‘safer’ by using the same cameras to issue tickets to anyone who runs a red light and is uninsured.

Just run the tags through the data-base of uninsured drivers and presto, an extra $100 million dollars a year in revenue.

Someone pointed out that uninsured drivers, almost by definition, probably don’t have much money to pay big fines.

But what the hey.

If you also ticket deadbeat dads and people with overdue library books you could make a killing at every intersection in town.

Naturally, in Chicago, one of the biggest proponents of expanding red-light camera fines to catch the uninsured is a private company that sells all the software needed for ‘instant’ checks of vehicle license tags.

While no other city, county or state is thought to be using such a system yet, a spokeswoman for the company claims 3 or 4 states are about to buy in.

Yes, my friends, there’s a big bad wolf at the door dressed like granny.

It has very sharp teeth-- and it’s hungry.

Truck parking is in the news again. And most of the news is bad.

But while we focus on truck stops, rest areas and the other obvious spots, there’s another problem creeping around behind that.

OOIDA member Tom Hoyt reminded us of it recently. He called in a story that he witnessed. A trucker was scheduled to pick up in the morning from a shipper/receiver, so he asked the night guard if he could park in the company’s lot.

His truck and Tom’s were the only ones there.

Then, sometime during the night, another person with the shipper/receiver called up on the CB and told him he shouldn’t park there, that he should organize his time, plan his trip better so he didn’t have to sleep there.

This really wanged my chung for a lot of reasons.

For one, it really bugs me when some company bureaucrat goes on a power trip and gets nasty with someone just to prove they can.

If that parking lot has space, the trucker should be allowed to park there. Yes, the shipper or receiver does have the right to decide who can and can’t stay. But that doesn’t make what she did right.

It sounds like she’s forgotten that her company’s goods won’t move at all without truckers.

And her statement that truckers should plan better … you mean, like planning to have enough hours open and docks available to load and unload the number of trucks you know will be coming in? That kind of planning?

That is one lousy case of the pot calling the kettle black.

However, that being said, I really can’t offer much of a solution. If these people want to act like a bunch of bums, you can’t do much.

So if any of you encounter a situation like this, someone trying to prove their importance on your back, you might try this: Explain your situation to her boss. Call the company president.

Speak respectfully and calmly, and let the company president know that this is a matter of you serving them as a customer while obeying the very strict laws and regulations enforced on you by the federal government.

Tell the company president that you want to do your best to serve them, and that you want to obey the law while on their property – and that obeying this person who wanted you to move would have resulted in a violations of those laws.

You might be surprised how well things work when you go straight to the top.

Maybe Guns ’n’ Roses was right. I was talking to Steve Freidell of DeWaay Financial Network the other day about the outlook for the current economic crisis. Steve’s a smart guy, and I think you’re going to be hearing a lot more from him on the show.

I asked Steve how long he thought this whole mess was going to last, and he said that it wasn’t going to be fixed overnight, but that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not going to last forever, but it could be months or even another year before we start to fully recover. In other words, it’s going to take time and we need to be patient.

The trouble is, you turn on the news every day and it’s nothing but one downer of a story after another. The mainstream media have latched onto the stock market and feverishly reports on its every movement as if we all know exactly what those numbers mean. Or care.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t care, but after you watch those numbers bouncing all over the place for so long they begin to lose what little meaning they had in the first place. And the rest of the news is no better. It all becomes a blur of people out of work, companies going bankrupt, and endless political debate over what should be done about it all.

It’s hard to take. But there is an answer. There is one thing that you can do to stop the news cycle of doom from wearing you down to a nub. Shut the damn thing off.

Listen to some music. Watch a movie. Go outside for a walk. Spend some time just talking with your family and friends. It’s amazing how much smaller and more manageable your world seems to become when you shut off that squawking box in the living room (or in your sleeper) or turn the dial on the radio (unless you’re listening to Land Line Now, of course; then that dial stays right where it is until Mark signs off).

I’m not saying the news isn’t important. I think I’d be out of a job if I said that. We all need to stay on top of the latest stories and be aware of what’s going on in the world around us. After all, we can’t fix the problems of the world if we don’t know what they are.

All I’m saying is that just because the news is on 24/7, doesn’t mean you have to be.

I wrote this piece to the folks who produce the program “Here and Now” on WBUR, an NPR affiliate in Boston.

They had done a piece about moving more freight from trucks to railroads. But their piece ended up being kind of a teardown of truckers. And I feel pretty strongly about that kind of thing, as most of you know by now. And I like sharing.

So here’s the letter I sent to them, word for word as I sent it.

***

I was very disappointed to hear your piece “Roads to Rails” – not only as a listener, but as a journalist who covers the trucking industry.

There were so many fallacies in your guest’s statements that you never even challenged … it was quite disappointing, and not at all up to the standards we’ve all come to expect, especially from programs on public radio.

Here’s a few points you might want to consider the next time you report on this topic:

-You and your guest’s constant references to “scary trucks.” Did you miss the federal statistic – based on actual accident reports – that in 75 percent of truck-car collisions, the car is the one at fault? The statements regarding truck safety during your interview were not supported by the science that has been done on this topic, and amounted to fear-mongering, not reporting.

-I especially was disappointed with your statement that trucks were terrifying drivers on I-81. What was your basis for that statement? Are you terrified, and you’ve simply transferred your feelings to your audience? Have you received complaints? Is your evidence anecdotal, or supported by some kind of statistically valid poll, or scientific study? Is it possible that constant media coverage of so-called “scary trucks” may have affected the general public’s view of trucks?

-I am familiar with Virginia’s plan to move truck freight to rail. But here’s the problem, which you moved past without questioning, once again: What will they do with freight that arrives in Virginia by truck? Move it to rail, then back to truck if rail is not available as it continues to move past Virginia? One state cannot effectively manage a freight solution for products moving in an interstate fashion.

-More than 80 percent of incorporated communities in the United States have no access to rail – how will they get the goods they need if all this freight travels on rail? Did your guest’s estimations of the cost include rebuilding thousands of abandoned rail lines, reacquiring right of away and closing down rail-to-trail projects?

-How will goods get from the rails to the stores? I think trucks would be the answer, as they are now. How many Wal-Marts do you know with a railhead?

-Our economy is based now on “just-in-time” delivery – something rail is very bad at performing. How many businesses will ship by rail if it means radically increased costs and time, if they cannot operate in the “just-in-time” manner they are accustomed to, and that their business models depend on? How will the fuel savings achieved compare with the cost of restructuring the entire system of goods movement that has developed over the past few decades? How will you compel private businesses operating in a legal manner to abandon their view of the best, most efficient and most profitable way of operating their concerns?

-Railroads did not subsidize their competitors through taxes. The interstate highway system – and other highways and roads – are supported, as they have been since day one of the Eisenhower Interstate System – by a dedicated tax, the fuel tax. That was set up specifically to pay for highways by taxing the users. And in fact, the biggest problem has not been others subsidizing the highway trust fund; it’s been diversions from the trust fund for other, non-highway purposes.

-The statement that a particular highway is being “pounded apart” by big trucks ignores the fact that the road was supposed to be built to a standard that would support those trucks. It also ignores the fact that trucks pay 36 percent of the money going into the fund intended to pay for that road – despite the fact that nationwide, they represent a far smaller percentage of the overall traffic. Why are truckers to blame because that state has chosen to divert the money out of highway maintenance from a dedicated fund, in violation of the plan that created the tax? Why are truckers to blame because the state has failed in its duty to maintain the road with the taxes paid for that purpose?

-Your guest’s statements regarding electric rail’s environmental benefits are interesting, but did he miss the fact that nearly all our railroads now not only run on diesel fuel, but in fact, they use a far more polluting version of that fuel than trucks do, with far higher sulfur levels and particulate matter emissions than the fuel now run in trucks. And those are the elements of diesel exhaust that lead to the most illness. If we increase rail now without radical changes to increase electrification – a process far more expensive than your guest indicated – then it will be diesel trains running these routes.

Whatever you think of trains, I find it sad that the only way your guest can make his case for them is to tear down the industry and the workers who have, at very considerable personal sacrifice, kept this country’s freight moving. Based on the facts, the trucking industry deserves better. I hope the next time, you will offer a more balanced report.

Thanks for your consideration.

Mark Reddig

Host, Land Line Now

There’s an old expression: You know times are bad when you think about actually winning the lottery.

Well, times must be pretty freakin’ bad right now, because I’m buying lotto tickets.

Not the wimpy little scratch-off suckers either: I’m shopping for full-blown PowerBall, the big payoff, the whole enchilada, in Spanish “El Gordo,” etc.

And I’m willing to bet I’m not alone.

Do I think I really, really have a chance of winning, you ask. I’d say no; after all, I know the odds. So do the rest of you who buy tickets with me.

But I am buying tickets, so somewhere back in the deep recesses of my brain, I must think I have a chance. And I’m sure the attitude was helped along by my favorite Chinese joint.

That’s right, a Chinese restaurant. I know that sounds weird. Bear with me.

I go to the same joint virtually every time. Oh, occasionally, I’ll hit the odd buffet, but most of the time, I go to the same place and get the same thing: The chicken lettuce wraps and crab rangoon down at the Master Wok (how many places in America have that name?).

A while back, I was reading my fortune, and it had a message that spoke to me: “Keep your eyes open Thursday for a special opportunity.”

Aha! I thought. That’s when PowerBall winners usually hear of their good fortune. Must be a sign.

Next time I get my chicken lettuce wraps (seriously, they start cooking it when they see my car pull in), I get another winning fortune: “A big fortune will descend upon you this year.”

Whoa. This is getting good, I thought.

A couple of days and a couple of crab rangoons later, another hint from the people at the cookie factory: “Don’t just think. Act!”

The next time, I received two of the little buggers, and each of those cookies contained a gem, a message keeping with the theme of my future riches: “Anything is possible with a willing heart,” and “You will soon have the opportunity to improve your finances.”

It should be noted that each fortune comes with a set of PowerBall-friendly lotto numbers printed on the back, plus a feature labeled “Learn Chinese.” (“Mae yao” means “don’t” – apparently, I’m getting selective in which advice I take from fortune cookies.)

So every few weeks, when the jackpot gets a little heavy, I invest five buck-a-roonies in five sets of PowerBall numbers.

No riches have yet befallen me, as I’m sure is the case for so many of you out there who I suspect have done the same thing.

But I keep hoping. And I keep buying tickets. And I keep waiting for the fortune cookies to come through.

They say the economy is not based on gold, or money, or manufacturing – the economy is actually based on trust and confidence.

If that were true, I contend things would be better. If I’m actually willing to place trust and confidence in a little cookie that comes in a plastic wrapper down at the Master Wok, then having trust and confidence in our financial system should be a breeze.

Back at the first of this year, two Canadian provinces began enforcement of a speed limiter requirement.

The basics are this: Trucks that travel through Ontario and Quebec must have an operating speed limiter set at roughly 65 miles per hour – a requirement that brings up all kinds of safety concerns.

I still don’t understand how anyone who knows diddly squat about highway safety would think this will help prevent highway tragedies.

We all know that speed differentials will lead to more accidents. We’ve seen one study after another that show that, and no science indicating that limiters or lower speeds for trucks will help safety in any way.

On top of that, the problem with speeding in Ontario isn’t a truck problem. The speeding is something happening with cars. In fact, the effort in Quebec was started because of an accident involving a car in that province.

Some folks have resigned themselves to this new law. They think it’s a done deal and that we’ll never see it overturned.

I say we can do it. But we all have to work hard, and we all have to work together. Truckers who live in Canada need to call their lawmakers and let them know how this is affecting you. U.S. truckers need to call their lawmakers and talk about how this harms competition and creates unsafe conditions for U.S. truckers who try to operate in Ontario and Quebec.

We don’t have to simply live with this law. We can start calling our lawmakers over and over. We can let them know that the Ontario Trucking Association represents a small number of large carriers, not the bulk of truckers who live and run in that province. And we can tell them this new law makes things less safe, not more.

We can ask them to respond to us as voting citizens. We can ask them to change the law. We can ask that they pay attention to real science and make laws that really improve the situation.

That’s what elected officials are supposed to do in a democracy. Let’s see if they can do the job.

Despite the lower number of trucks in the slowing economy, the truck parking situation is actually getting worse in some places.

We’ve all heard of the situation in Virginia, where truckers are being told to get lost after just 2 hours in rest areas owned by the state – the same state that fines the truckers if they violate the hours of service rules.

But while that may be the most upsetting aspect of the problem, it’s not the biggest barrier to solving this mess.

That title may go to Natso – the national organization that represents truck stop operators.

The organization has continually contended that there is not a truck parking shortage – in part, because if more state-owned parking is built, such as rest areas, they think it will take away some of their members’ business.

Truckers will still have to fuel up, they’ll still have to eat, and they’ll still have to buy other products they need. So truck stops will do fine. And besides, protecting their business shouldn’t come before truckers who just need a decent place to get some rest.

This situation needs fixing. It’s a situation that won’t solve itself. It’s a situation that’s been waiting for the free market, or government, or some combination thereof to act and solve it for I don’t know how many years.

Rest areas – or, as the feds have always called them, safety rest areas – have been part of the interstate system since day one. Opposing their expansion meets no need and serves no purpose. We need more, not fewer, rest areas on the roads.

We need them to be open long enough for truckers to fulfill their obligations under the hours of service. And the truck stops need to stop getting in the way of making that happen.

A while back, news outlets were reporting on a provision in the so-called economic recovery package – the bill we had been referring to as the economic stimulus plan – that would require any steel used in infrastructure projects paid for under the bill to be produced in the United States.

It’s something rare in Congress – a common sense provision that most folks can agree with.

But it generated a lot of heat from folks who think it is unnecessary and perhaps even harmful.

I disagree. When a product is made here and when we spend money here to buy it, it seems logical to me that it is more helpful to our economy than spending money on a product made elsewhere.

But this provision is not enough. Not in my book. We can expect that the government can buy American and that will really fix the problem.

The fact is, we have to try to buy American. And sometimes it’s not easy.

I have a good friend who’s been using the same set of stereo speakers since he was in high school in the late ’70s and early ’80s. The speakers finally shot craps, so he wanted a new pair, and he wanted to buy American.

The fact is, unless you go into the ultra-expensive speakers designed for the rich, you can’t buy American. They don’t make affordable speakers here.

He ended up buying Canadian. The speakers were reasonably priced, listed as the highest quality in their class, and the wages and working conditions in Canada are comparable to the U.S., so he knew he wasn’t paying cheap wages or exploiting some poor worker in another country.

And there’s a point hidden in there. If Canada can pay a decent wage and treat workers similarly to the way they’re treated here, if they can do that in an environment that’s even more regulated than it is here in the U.S., then what’s stopping us from doing it here?

It begins and ends with us. We buy the stuff at Wal-Mart, Sears, Target and J.C. Penney’s. We elect the officials who run the government.

If we want things made in America, then we need to ask if something is really made here when we buy it, and we need to tell our officials to do the same.

You choose where and how you spend your dollars. And only you can use that power.

You may have noticed that Massachusetts is one of the latest states to jump on the soak-the-trucker bandwagon.

Massachusetts would toll part of I-93 and more than double its diesel fuel tax (from 23 cents to over 50 cents) if the legislature buys into Governor Deval Patrick’s plan.

Maryland, of course, recently went even further—targeting truckers with new, higher tolls while letting 4-wheelers skate at the old rate.

A proposal in Illinois to double the cost of base-plating in the state was abandoned only after truckers inundated the statehouse with phone calls.

Some politicians seem to be under the mistaken impression that truckers are the geese that lay those golden eggs.

A 2008 OOIDA survey, however, found respondents saying their average net income was about $40,000 a year—about the same as a carpenter.

Yet the pols keep hatching hare-brained proposals to soak money from truckers in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the depression (something they wouldn’t dare try with the rest of their constituents).

And they’d pile the new costs on top of the fuel taxes, excise taxes, road use taxes, and registration costs that truckers already pay.

(Maybe carriers need to put those signs on the back of their trailers again that say, “This vehicle pays umpteen thousands of dollars in taxes”)

Because if the politicians keep trying to squeeze more golden eggs out of truckers,

they may soon discover that the goose is cooked.

As most truckers know, New York is working toward a ban on most trucks that would keep them off certain small highways in the Finger Lakes region. And it raises the question – why?

Is it because the vacationers who have houses in the area don’t like the big, nasty trucks? Perhaps, although their complaints were about garbage trucks, not the 18-wheeled beauties that deliver everything from their toilet paper to canned corn.

So if not that, then what?

The simple answer comes from the fact that the New York Thruway – and the Thruway’s tolls – is the main alternative.

The fact is, this is nothing short of a shakedown, and that’s pretty clear. New York is pushing this to get more toll money, and they’re using the fussy folks of the Finger Lakes to get the job done, to justify what they want.

However, there is some hope. Here’s what is happening.

Back in the fall, the Federal Highway Administration stepped in, sending a letter to Astrid Glynn, the commissioner of the New York State Department of Transportation.

Here’s some of what Jeffrey Kolb, division administrator with FHWA, wrote to Glynn:

“Your proposed draft adversely affects two federal regulations. One pertains to commercial vehicle size. The other pertains to reasonable access mobility allowances for Surface Transportation Assistance Act vehicles seeking to access terminals, rest and food. Both are matters of direct interest to FHWA.”

The FHWA letter goes on to point out that New York’s proposed rule would define trucks in a way that could restrict trucks’ access, and therefore, in the FHWA’s words, “is in direct conflict with federal regulations.”

The letter then pointed out that FHWA requires reasonable access off the national network. The FHWA says, “Many of the criteria in the proposed regulations do not meet this requirement.”

That’s when we get to the really juicy stuff. Kolb of the FHWA wrote this:

“Our review indicates that adoption of the regulations as currently written would not comply with the applicable federal truck size and weight laws and regulations, and would precipitate an FHWA review of legal options to pre-empt the nonconforming state requirements.”

The New York DOT has since taken steps to make their plan compliant with FHWA rules. Among the concessions the DOT made was to change the plan for 60 restricted routes to seven restricted routes. OK, that’s better, but the best solution would be just to drop the whole bad plan. In the state’s own cost analysis, it would cost truckers $10 million more a year in fuel, tolls and operating costs to route around the secondary roads.

The proposed plan is in the hands of the Governor’s Office of Regulatory Reform, called GORR. This is the place where rules go to get reviewed to see if the rule has merit before it is adopted. And in the meantime, OOIDA is communicating with New York officials to make it clear what truckers’ needs are, and how the proposed rule will affect them.

We’ll continue to bring you updates on the situation as they become available. In the meanwhile, you can still make your views known. It’s not too late. The DOT can withdraw their proposal at any time during the process.

You can send a letter to New York State’s DOT at this address:

Commissioner Astrid C. Glynn

New York State Department of Transportation

50 Wolf Road, 6th Floor

Albany, New York 12232

Every trucker who runs through that region, who lives there, who even has a stake in the state of New York, needs to write a letter.

If we don’t stop this, it sets a precedent. And this is a precedent no one in trucking can afford.

On this week’s Diesel Update, I started a discussion about companies that require drivers to fuel up at their terminals, rather than at truck stops. We’ve started to get some calls about this and we wanted to know what was up.

The reason we wanted to know is because it seems kind of strange, at a time when fuel prices are so low, for companies to issue such demands. It made sense when fuel was near $5 a gallon, but with prices now at four-year lows, why not let truckers fuel up wherever they want?

So I put the question out there. I got a bunch of responses from company drivers who said that, even with the low cost of fuel, it was still cheaper for their companies to make drivers fuel up at terminals because they own the pumps and all of the equipment and probably bought the fuel at a volume discount.

Makes sense to me. But apparently that’s not the case with every company. I had one driver call and tell me his company bought fuel on a futures contract when it was $2.71 a gallon, so that’s what they’re paying now. It made sense at the time of the purchase, I’m sure, but now that fuel is on its way toward the $2 a gallon mark, that contract is looking like a bad idea.

But that’s the price you pay when you take a chance on the futures market. Nobody, not even the most seasoned, knowledgeable expert in the petroleum field, can say for sure what the market will do in the future. All anyone can do is offer their best educated guess.

Oil analysts are kind of like weathermen in that respect. They may have tons of information, numbers, statistics and computer models, but all it takes is one unexpected storm to send their predictions flying out the window.