By land: The cross-border trucking saga continues as local players cry foul. (Spotlight).

Behind the walls of Monterrey's Grupo MonRo's trucking compound on the highway to Nuevo Laredo, sit rows of gleaming new trucks that, if not for their Mexican license plates, could be confused with the same vehicles that established U.S. companies use for traversing roads north of the border.

U.S. unions and safety groups have long painted Mexican trucking companies as the rickety, unreliable product of a developing nation. Meanwhile, some Mexican companies made modernizing their fleets a high priority in anticipation of Nafta.

"Even though many trucks in Mexico axe new, American authorities don't think Mexican trucks are the same as U.S. trucks," said Mon-Ro Operations Manager Rogelio Montemayor, whose 50-year-old company has been purchasing its vehicles from Portland, Oregon-based Freightliner, a DaimlerChrysler company, since the early 1990s.

More than 200 of Mon-Ro's approximate 300 trucks are fit for U.S. safety standards, he said. Interestingly, much of the company's fleet is composed of Freightliner's Century Class line of trucks, the same line Lowell, Arkansas-based trucking giant J.B. Hunt Transport Services recently converted its fleet to.

CLAMORS FROM THE UNDERDOG

Despite attempts, nobody has succeeded in proving there is an overwhelming difference in the overall safety level of Mexican and U.S. long-haul trucks-those rigs that cover long distances and thus would travel highways in the interiors of both countries.

U.S. inspectors took an average 36% of Mexican trucks that cross the border out of service for safety violations in 2000, compared to an average 24% of U.S. trucks. But these percentages include the small- to medium-sized trucks used by custom brokers and border-town independent trucking operators to haul freight from the Mexican side to the U.S. side, basically from one import lot to another.

Indeed, according to the National Chamber of Cargo Transportation (Canacar), only 17.65% of Mexico's estimated 372,000 commercial cargo trucks are owned by large-sized companies like Mon-Ro, with fleets of over 100 units and the latest transport equipment. By comparison, 53.62% are run by tens of thousands of family-run businesses with no more than five trucks each.

Owners of larger long-haul companies in northern Mexico argue that their trucks are in good condition. For example, Monterrey-based Transportes Cuauhtemoc replaces its 500

Kenworth-brand trucks every three years, according to director and Canacar Vice President Leon A. Flores. And Roberto Quintanilla, president of Nuevo Laredo-based Transportes Quintanilla, said his company purchased the majority of its approximate 300-truck fleet in 1998.

Entirely unrestricted truck traffic between both nations was supposed to start last year under Nafta, but opposition from U.S. unions and safety groups has kept that from happening. Congress and the Bush administration finally agreed last November on a plan that would let Mexican trucks make deliveries throughout the United States, following mandatory, rigorous safety checks.

NOT SO FAST

Manuel Sotelo, owner of Juarez-based Fletes Sotelo and president of the Ciudad Juarez Trucking Association, sees the new agreement as a protectionist policy wrapped in the guise of road safety.

"We don't think the U.S. government really has any will to let Mexican trucks into the country. All these regulations are impossible to comply with," Sotelo said.

Inspectors have already turned his short-haul rigs away from the border for infractions as minor as a burnt out interior light, he said.

Mon-Ro fleet manager Pedro Garza said the U.S.-Mexico trucking conflict is more an issue of "who will concede to whom" than one of safety.

"Will the Mexican truck drivers learn English, or will the U.S. truck drivers learn Spanish? What about road conditions? Mexican drivers are not used to snow. American drivers are not used to Mexican road conditions. Will the American truck driver have to work for less, or will the Mexican driver get to work for more? Will Mexican freight rates rise or will U.S. freight rates fall?" he asked.

The new trucking safety requirements contribute to a climate of uncertainty among Mexican trucking companies, holding them back from making concrete plans to expand beyond their current restricted zone of 20 miles north of the U.S. border. Canacar's Flores summed up an array of his and other Mexican long-haul companies' worries about bi-national trucking with one simple observation.

"Thousands of U.S. inspectors are waiting to check us out, but on the Mexican side, there's no one," he said. ''There isn't any balance."

RELATED ARTICLE: The agreement requires:

* U.S. safety officials to inspect the sites of half of all Mexican motor carriers seeking to enter the United States that have four or more trucks.

* Every Mexican truck to undergo a physical inspection every 90 days to operate in the United States.

* Mexican trucks to cross the border only at border crossings where inspectors are on duty and there is adequate capacity to conduct safety enforcement activities.

* U.S. border agents to electronically verify the licenses of drivers of all Mexican trucks carrying hazardous materials, and half of all other Mexican truck drivers.

Cheryl Smith is a Monterrey-based freelance writer.