Odds in favor of Mexican drug cartels

One of the biggest buzzwords in business today is “efficiency.” Everybody wants to get things done faster with less work.

The U.S. Border and Customs Patrol program on the Mexican border is no exception. A recent Associated Press article called into question the program’s effectiveness on security.

Years ago, the agency launched its C-TPAT program – Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. The premise was to speed border crossings for companies who shared their security programs and established a record of trust with the Border Patrol.

The upside for the companies was fewer delays at the border. The program was lauded as a huge success by some of the participating companies.

Take for example this ringing endorsement by Confab Laboratories Inc.

“Our transporters, which are all C-TPAT accredited, can use at the U.S. border the ‘FAST Lane’ which minimizes the time to cross the border. Only two of our transporters were inspected since our accreditation in November 2007.”

Wow, only twice?

According to Customs’ own numbers, the program has indicated from its inception that C-TPAT importers are “four to six times less likely to incur a security or compliance examination.”

The flip side, according to the Border Patrol, is that non-trusted companies would have their shipments inspected more often.

It doesn’t take high level math, or even a “Jimmy the Greek” level oddsmaker, to figure this one out. If you’re the Mexican drug cartel, you’re going to put your money – and dope – on those C-TPAT shipments.

Leaning on some poor dock worker at a preferred carrier’s shipping operation could land massive amounts of illegal drugs on a trailer that’s going to sail through the border in less than 20 seconds by some estimations.

We won’t even go there on accusations of corruption at the border. That concern has been documented and beat around in publications, on news stations and even in Congress.

Streamlining the border has obvious unintended consequences. The illegal criminal element will always circumvent the law and programs designed with good intentions.

The C-TPAT program is an obvious example of that. It’s a system that, if the criminal element hasn’t already broken it, is in the process of breaking.

Before we start opening up any more lanes, or “trusting” any more Mexican motor carriers or shippers – like in a long-haul cross-border program with the U.S. – it’s time for some tough decisions on the border.

Even though some would like you to believe we have no choice but to grant access to freight from Mexico because of NAFTA. That’s just not true.

The U.S. is under no more obligation to open the border to Mexico and risk harm to our citizens, than good parents are obligated to let the troublemaker down the street into their home.

Sure, we’d like to play nice with Mexico, but with its out-of-control drug problems – it’s kind of like the next-door neighbor kid who brings pot in your house.

“We’d love to welcome you here. But, until you clean up your act, you’re just not allowed to come over.”

Simple, but sometimes solutions are.

It’s called an off switch

If more people knew where the off switch was on their cell phones and other personal devices, perhaps we wouldn’t be having this discussion about distracted driving.

That might be a bit of an exaggeration. Even without cell phones, driver distraction would still make for a worthy topic. Nonetheless, the phones and other communications devices are near and dear to us, and they are here to stay.

Let’s talk about some of the work being done to combat distracted driving.

You likely already know about the legislative efforts on Capitol Hill to assist or force states to enact new or tougher distracted-driving laws. If not, do some research and read up on Senate bills S1938 and S1536 and House bill HR3535. OOIDA supports the approach taken in S1938.

Public service campaigns in the form of TV ads, Internet videos and general media awareness are gaining traction. Sometimes, they take the extreme approach, but if it hits home with young drivers, the job is getting done.

Next up are the technology vendors, who are clamoring to bring technologies to market to reduce driver distractions.

A handful of vendors presented their products and concepts on Friday, Nov. 20, during a workshop held by the Federal Communications Commission.

One thing is certain (keeping in mind that technology shares blame in this mess): The competition in the technological arena is sure to be fierce.

Some technologies could be downloaded or used to disable or lock a driver’s phone while a vehicle is in motion. We already know about Bluetooth and others that allow hands-free.

OK. Here’s one that made me curious. If you were driving and your phone started ringing or alerting you to a text, the cell provider or an application could “answer” it for you and tell the person on the other end that you’re busy driving and will return the call or text later.

Exceptions would obviously be made so drivers can call 9-1-1 or navigate safely on a route.

Obviously, some kinks would need to be worked out including the issue of privacy.

I don’t believe there’s a one-size-fits-all application out there yet that’s going to solve these problems outright. The off switch still sounds like a frontrunner to me.

Last but not least – and I like this one for any type of distraction –is the concept of driver education and training. Teach people what is safe behind the wheel and what is not, and this becomes a lot easier than trying to get spilled milk back into the glass.

New York shortchanged by elected officials

By now you may have heard about a recent report that showed roads and bridges in New York state are getting only one-third of the money they should be receiving.

That’s right. And while it’s no revelation that states raid one fund to help plug leaks elsewhere, it doesn’t make it any easier for the public – in this case, residents of the Empire State – to stomach such ghastly figures.

According to a report from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, nearly $12 billion in highway and motor vehicle tax revenues the state has generated over the past two decades is siphoned off for other purposes.

In a report appropriately titled “Highway Robbery,” DiNapoli said the trend will continue to worsen unless changes are made.

It’s a grim outlook for road and bridge funding in New York. More money must be found. And it appears the desperate times are causing some state officials to crack under the weight of the burden.

That leads us to another point of contention in New York. The state is requiring drivers to buy new license plates this spring. Added to the current budget, the new $25 fee on plates – up from $15 – for car and truck drivers wasn’t scheduled to take effect until 2011, but it was pushed up a year to provide a $129 million shot in the arm for the state’s suffering economy.

Not only would the state budget get a jolt, but the Paterson administration said it was also a matter of safety. Apparently, the current plates’ reflectivity is fading, and the new $25 license plates – with dark blue and gold colors – were just what the doctor ordered to make the roadways safer.

Well, this is where things really started to get sticky for the administration. According to media reports, county clerks submitted more than 100,000 signatures earlier this week asking the state to abandon its pursuit of the fee.

The unrest couldn’t be ignored, and within a couple of days Gov. Paterson told an audience listening to WWRL-AM in New York City that the new fee on license plates was nothing more than a “revenue grab.” He said people don’t need new plates early.

Of course, there is no storybook ending to this tale. Paterson said the state still needs $129 million to make up for that revenue they were anticipating during this budget year.

It’s a travesty that taxpayers have to put up with these practices from their elected officials. No wonder they have lost our trust.

When it comes to rerouting revenues and fudging the facts to get what they want, lawmakers have long since crossed over the line in the sand. Who can blame us for being fed up with it all?

A refreshing change: TV tackles real trucking issues

All too often, it’s the fiery crash that grabs up media headlines and leaves audiences with an irrational fear or dislike for heavy trucks that share their roadways.

While crashes and fatalities do occur and are tragic, the viewer rarely gets to hear stories about other trucking issues or from the men and women behind the wheel.

Every so often, someone gets it right. Recently, that someone was Dan Rather, who dedicated two recent episodes of “Dan Rather Reports” on HDNet to trucking issues with an emphasis on driver training. Even though he did cover safety and crashes in his reports, he also asked truckers about training, experience and other topics such as the economy, driver pay and competition.

The latest was Episode 436, titled “Truck talk,” which aired Tuesday, Nov. 10. It was based on a trucking roundtable discussion that featured OOIDA Executive Vice President Todd Spencer and OOIDA Life Member Miles Verhoef.

Rather’s team invited the panelists to Willie’s Place Theater at Carl’s Corner, TX, to break new ground in addition to revisiting topics covered in a previous show (Episode 433, “Queen of the Road”) featuring OOIDA Member Desiree Wood.

Rather demonstrated his reporting experience by researching the issues and asking tough but fair questions of the panelists. Many of the subjects were ones that OOIDA and its trucking constituency have long been concerned with.

It was refreshing to see an established newsman like Rather asking the right questions and allowing the panelists time to answer without a lot of editing.

Spencer is no stranger to TV cameras, having appeared on CNN, Fox, C-SPAN and other networks through the years. Time constraints on many news or talk shows leave little time for much more than a sound bite or a brief discussion of a single issue. Not so with the Rather report.

So what made this latest report so darned good?

For one thing, the topics did not magically appear out of thin air, thanks to OOIDA Media Spokesperson Norita Taylor who fielded numerous calls from Rather’s producers during the months leading up to the taping. The time Rather and his staff put into the research paid off.

While we at Land Line Magazine and Land Line Now report on many of these topics extensively, it was quite refreshing to see Rather bring the dialogue into America’s living room.

He is not going to stop there. Rather said he will continue to pursue trucking stories for future episodes of his news program. On behalf of all highway users, let’s hope for a big audience.

In lieu of flowers

Trucker Larry Works, a longtime OOIDA member with a larger-than-life personality, died earlier this week.

Larry’s widow, Chris Works, told me that truckers and friends were welcome to make a donation to the American Lung Association in lieu of flowers.

I got to know Larry two years ago, when he called Land Line to talk about his 2006 arrest at a Joplin, MO truck stop.

As Land Line detailed in this news story, Larry was tasered multiple times, and both he and his wife were pepper sprayed while inside their truck cab after an argument with an apparently off-duty sheriff’s deputy from Newton County, MO.

With a booming voice and occasionally colorful language, Larry enjoyed talking about his work and all the friends he made. In fact, he had contact information for several witnesses he said backed up his side of the taser incident story.

Larry died from an apparent heart attack on Monday, something his family said stems from the 2006 tasing incident.

Like many truck drivers and OOIDA members, Larry was a military veteran and a self-made businessman. Larry didn’t mind telling me he had no problem sticking up for himself and his wife after what he termed an encounter with a “rogue, off-duty” cop that July day in south Missouri.

Unfortunately, the Works family was forever changed by the incident, and we’ve all now lost a good driver and a great character.

Sniper stalked truckers in 1953

In 1953, a roving sniper was on the loose terrorizing communities, shooting people to death at random. All the shots allegedly were fired from the same weapon. Detectives frantically pursued the killer, questioned suspects, analyzed clues, and followed countless leads.

The story dominated the national media, which called the shootings “an unprecedented wave of fear.” The story sounds a lot like the DC sniper story, but it happened about 56 years ago in Pennsylvania.

On July 25, 1953, trucker Lester Woodward, 30, was fatally shot while sleeping in his truck’s cab near the Irwin Interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Western Pennsylvania.

Three days later and 30 miles farther east on the turnpike, near Donegal, trucker Harry Pitts, 28, was slain by the same “phantom killer.”

Three days after that, trucker John Shepherd, 36, was shot and wounded as he slept in his truck’s cab near Lisbon, OH – 18 miles from the western end of the turnpike.

Truck driver and OOIDA Life Member John Taylor, of Cross Junction, VA, vividly remembered those events. He told me about it during the 2002 Beltway shooting spree prior to the arrests of John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo. I wrote it up for Land Line in November 2002.

“It was a scary time,” said Taylor. In the summer of 1953, he said he was running the Pennsylvania Turnpike hauling apples out of Winchester, VA, into Pittsburgh. “Everybody was concerned. Most truckers, including myself, were carrying a firearm for protection.”

Drivers began bunching at service plazas and taking turns sleeping and standing guard. “The police discouraged us from sleeping along the turnpike so a lot of us began parking at Howard Johnsons,” said Taylor.

Suspects were questioned in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, as well as a gang from St. Louis.

A week after the third shooting, a 24-year-old farmhand from Fayette County, PA, was arrested on a minor assault charge in Uniontown, PA. John Wesley Wable told police he was the “Turnpike Phantom,” but they dismissed him as a “screwball” and let him go.

A week later, however, the wounded trucker’s stolen pocket watch turned up in a Cleveland pawnshop. Police traced it to a nearby rooming house where they found the .32-caliber German pistol used in the three shootings – and a woman who said she was Wabel’s girlfriend.

After a nationwide manhunt, Wable was arrested Oct. 13 near Albuquerque, NM.

Wable later was convicted in the shootings. He was executed by electrocution on Sept. 26, 1955.

“The police never said why he did it,” Taylor recalled, “but it must have been because the turnpike was in his area, and it just was easy access for him.”

Pass me a grape Nehi …

Truck writers are a nutty bunch. I got an e-mail today from Rufus Sideswipe, the gearjammin’ imaginary pal of Land Line columnist Bill Hudgins. This e-mail was a copy of a note sent to another Land Line columnist, Dave Sweetman.

Rufus, it seems, read Sweetman’s column in the October Land Line and liked it a lot. If you haven’t read it, it’s called “Blue Highways,” and I agree it’s one of Sweetman’s best. Good enough to bring a fictional character like Rufus “to life,” I guess.

Allow me to share this exchange. The fictional Rufus writes to Dave:

That was one fine journey back down the backroads in Land Line. That other writer fella, Bill Hudgins, what quotes me all the time – he says he read “Blue Highways” and “Travels With Charley” and “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and did some roaming, too. But then he got sidetracked and stuck in one place with that Wilma of his. Thanks for the trip! – RS

Now considering that Bill wrote this in the guise of Rufus, I really like the “Wilma” touch – seeing as how Bill’s wife is WILDA, not Wilma.

In fact, I couldn’t resist shooting off a totally fictitious note to Rufus myself, claiming to have run into Hudge back before we were truck editors. I said I thought I saw him once, standing on the corner in Winslow, AZ.

I copied Sweetman, who was quick with a reply to Rufus, copying me back, of course.

Awww, shucks! To get a word or three of kind encouragement from the well traveled Rufus, is plum flatterin’ alright. Guess that means I have nine readers now, including my dear old Mom.

And I always did like that Hudge feller’s writing. Met him a time or two, but not in Winslow, or Show Low or Tupelo. We talked once about sharing a couple pulls on some Lem Motlow, till we found out it costs more than the GNP of BearWhizBeckistan. When the subject of who was buying came about, the subject pert near changed fast as greased lightnin’. A bottle of grape Nehi was affordable and had the same effect.

Again, many thanks for the kind words and for being a Land Line reader.

That Dave feller

This Rufus Sideswipe stuff is all in fun, of course. Hudge says he invented the character years ago. Did you know that many readers actually DO think he is real?

OOIDA Member Bob “Cowpoke” Martin of Lafayette, IN, is one guy who doesn’t buy it, though. In fact, Hudgins’ literary leaping back and forth in and out of the Rufus character once prompted CP to e-mail me with the question “does Land Line have a random drug testing policy in place?”