Short-haul truckers work the border

Written by Sandra Dibble signonsandiego.com

On a good day, Ruben Betancourt might spend two hours behind the wheel of a heavy-duty diesel truck hauling a cargo container from Tijuana to San Diego. Then he gets in line again, spending an hour to return to Mexico.

If he’s lucky, he’ll be able to turn around and repeat that cycle two more times — for a total of nine hours spent inching back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Betancourt is part of an army of Mexican short-distance truckers with iron endurance for long lines at the international border. They are sometimes known as drayage operators or burreros, Spanish for mule drivers. They haul goods between the two countries within a narrow geographic zone.

“It’s very tedious and very stressful,” said Betancourt, 43, a Mexico City native who has been a burrero for 12 years. “We just have to learn to relax.”

Supporters of the North American Free Trade Agreement say the burreros represent a costly and unnecessary step that hopefully will become obsolete one day. They dream of a time when trucks carrying cargo from anywhere in Mexico will be allowed to make deliveries anywhere in the United States, then return loaded with goods for Mexico.

But nearly 18 years after NAFTA was launched, this has yet to happen. Mexican trucking companies are largely barred from all but a small U.S. commercial zone — about 25 miles from border ports of entry. Last month, the Obama administration launched a pilot program that allows approved Mexican trucks to travel across the United States, but only one company has been cleared to participate.

In the meantime, thousands of burreros continue to play a central role in moving goods between the U.S. and Mexico, its third-largest trade partner.

“There’s a niche for them,” said Jaime González Luna, a logistics specialist and president of the Tijuana Economic Development Corporation.

Owners of trucking companies operating between Tijuana and San Diego said they’re not worried about being phased out by NAFTA. They’re most concerned about the California Air Resources Board’s new emission standards for diesel trucks and buses, which will be phased in starting Jan. 1. Vehicles that don’t meet those rules will need to be replaced or outfitted with costly filters.

Crossings slower

On a recent weekday, dozens of northbound trucks could be seen lining up in Tijuana outside the Otay Mesa commercial port of entry, where U.S. Customs and Border Protection counts an average of 2,050 truck crossings from Mexico each day.

By 10 a.m., Betancourt made his first crossing into San Diego for the day. Shortly afterward, he steered a 1982 Peterbilt with purple fenders into the queue of southbound trucks carrying empty containers back to Mexico.