FORT ERIE, Ont. — Truck traffic flow to U.S. border crossings is pretty much normal today, despite it being the start of a new fee collection program by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Beginning today, an additional levy of $5.25 (US) per truck, per crossing, is being charged to all southbound trucks. The Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) fee is to fund additional agricultural quarantine inspections at the border. All trucks, regardless of what they’re hauling, have to pay up, however.

Most carriers have already paid an additional $105 per truck for an annual border-crossing transponder, which includes the APHIS levy.

Ontario Trucking Association Vice President Stephen Laskowski says he hasn’t fielded any calls from carriers reporting problems at the border. “I’m not surprised though. Most of our carriers buy the transponder. You’d be foolish not to. The fee is already built into the transponder.”

There’s been little or no reported delays caused by the
APHIS fee charged to truckers heading to the U.S.

Even still, Laskowski tells TodaysTrucking.com he hasn’t heard of any major delays caused by unsuspecting truckers asked to dig into their pockets for an extra $5.25 when they stop at the CBP booth.

Kevin Corsaro, CBP information offer for New York area ports, confirms as much. “There’s been no impact whatsoever and we don’t anticipate any,” he tells TodaysTrucking.com. “We have been very proactive getting the message out there to ensure all trucking companies were well aware of this in advance.”

The situation at Michigan land crossings is more or less the same says Ron Smith, CBP Chief Public Affairs Officer in that state. After making a few phone calls to a few field offices, he reports very little problems with collections or delays.

“You always have a driver or two that doesn’t have the right kind of money, or is trying to find that last 20 cents or something. But overall, there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

Laskowski says the trucking industry didn’t need any further problems this weekend considering the number of border issues affecting carriers this past week.

“It’s been a hard week to judge exactly what’s going on,” he said. “You had the hangover of Memorial Day traffic; we had brokers issues; ACE was implemented, and then the issue of APHIS. It was a mixed bag this week.”

Meanwhile, the CEO of the Canadian Trucking Alliance was south of the border spreading the message of Canadian truckers’ increasing border woes.
The Canadian border is “thickening” with added regulations and costs, David Bradley told a conference of US, Mexican and Canadian trade and transportation stakeholders.

Governments, mainly at the national level, “continue to heap costs on transborder trucking under the cloak of security,” he says.

The trucking industry has had to cope with at least a dozen new U.S. security measures in the last six years, explained Bradley. “It is really the theatre of security. No one seems to be doing a cost-benefit analysis and we don’t know where it will end.”

“If our political leaders really do want the North American trade bloc to be able to compete with the emerging economic super powers in Asia or even the European Union, then they must consider the costs that the supply chain has to absorb,” he said.