April 10, 2006

 

The following article is excerpted from the 10 April 2006 edition of “The Journal of Commerce”.

Trucking officials from the United States and Canada said tougher security requirements could drive some carriers out of the cross-border market.

The stiffer requirements issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as part of the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) puts responsibility for checking upstream security of supply-chain partners squarely on carriers.

While participation in the program, which gives importers streamlined clearance in exchange for self-policing of supply-chain security, remains voluntary, Customs can withdraw or suspend a company's membership in C-TPAT if it finds non-compliance during a "validation" check-up. That could threaten speedy movement of trans-border truck
shipments between the U.S. and Canada offered by the Free and Secure Trade (FAST) program, which is tied to C-TPAT membership.

"I'm very concerned about how these more stringent new rules will affect FAST, because of a loss of carriers who won't want to stay in C-TPAT or join it," said Sandi Villeneuve, president of Canada's Association of International Customs and Border Agencies….

"There will be a particular burden on small and medium-sized carriers," Villeneuve said. "C-TPAT will require carriers have to verify if their partners and customers are in C-TPAT or not. Customers are not partners of the carriers, but, let's say, of the car [makers] that hire the truckers, who would have checked out their suppliers anyway."

Villeneuve said small- and mid-sized carriers "are in a lot of panic -- confused as to what they must do….

The American Trucking Associations and the Canadian Trucking Alliance both say that U.S. Customs is adamant that truckers' customers are partners and must be checked out by the carriers.

"There are a lot of grey areas," said Ron Lennox, Canadian Trucking Alliance vice president. "Top of the list for me is the business partners issue. We are talking about trucking companies here, not professional risk assessment companies.
How do our members go about doing this? What are the criteria they should use? What should they be looking for?" Drivers also will be required to undertake additional security
inspections of their rigs, and have those inspection repeated by company supervisors.

Margaret Irwin, director of cross-border operations for the ATA, calls the customer-partners issue "one of the more serious areas of disagreement that we had with CBP. We are asking for clarification. They just keep telling us that it's simpler than we think it is. They don't think it's such a big deal. But a lot is not clear. For example, what is a business partner? How far along the chain do we have to go? What exactly are we going to have to do?"