The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has announced proposal details of cross-border trucking project with Mexico, which will require fewer participants and equip participating Mexican trucks with GPS or electronic on-board recorders.

The FMCSA’s April 8 plan for a cross-border trucking project with Mexico otherwise contained few details not already disclosed by Mexican or U.S. officials or contained in the previous program Congress ended in 2009. 

The agency’s notice and request for comment on the plan will be published soon in the Federal Register. After that, the public will have 30 days to comment. The FMCSA will formally respond to feedback and consider public comment in forming its final program.

The initial pilot project sought 100 carriers each from Mexico and the United States to participate, but the program failed to get sufficient participation to form statistically valid conclusions.

A sample size of 4,100 roadside inspections performed on pilot program participants will allow FMCSA to detect differences in violation rates of 2 percentage points or greater with a 90 percent confidence level.

The agency anticipates an average of one long-haul border crossing per week per truck with each Mexican carrier having two trucks participating in the program. It assumes an attrition rate of 25 percent after 18 months in the project and calculates 46 carriers will suffice to achieve a target of 4,100 inspections within three years.

The target sample size in the previous project was to estimate differences in crash rates between U.S. carriers and participants, FMCSA officials said.