US regulators urged to end union chassis inspections

[Omaha Steve]

Source: JOC

Bill Mongelluzzo

With longshore unions on both coasts moving aggressively to enforce chassis inspection requirements, the American Trucking Associations wants the Federal Maritime Commission and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to immediately put an end to inspections it says are creating costly delays for drayage truck drivers.

“These inspections are illegal,” Curtis Whalen, executive director of ATA’s intermodal conference, said Tuesday in an interview,

Whalen last week wrote FMC Chairman Mario Cordero, asking the commission to “take such actions as are necessary and appropriate” to keep the International Longshore and Warehouse Union on the West Coast, and the International Longshoremen’s Association on the East Coast, from performing what ATA charges are redundant inspections of chassis at marine terminals.

“As part of that process, we also ask that you confer with the FMCSA to engage their help in enforcing chassis roadability requirements that are being violated by the ILWU inspection program and unnecessarily encumbering port and industry efforts to address port congestion problems,” Whalen stated in his letter to the FMC chairman.

FULL story at link.



Read more: http://www.joc.com/port-news/us-ports/us-regulators-urged-end-union-chassis-inspections_20150623.html

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Arguing against safe trucks on the road!

Thanks to NAFTA we will soon have trucks from Mexico running all over the US, not just the current 10 mile in zone.

[wordpix]

1. outrageous - inspections are backing up the ports, really?

How about fixing an antiquated port infrastructure that hearkens back 100 yrs? Guess what, we had sailing merchant ships then and now we have container ships, giant cruise ships and huge luxury yachts in the same ports. That alone will back up the system.

[NCjack]

2. When US trucks are worn so badly that they are not repairing, many are exported

to Mexico. Some get good renovations, and some get shoddy work just good enough to run cargo back into the US. Mexican enforcement of truck worthiness standards is poor. We have to inspect them before admission.

[Recursion]

3. Where are the Teamsters on this? (nt)