Too_Many_Tools wrote:

Hi,

Since I know that some of you do considerable long distance hauling, I
thought you might find this interesting.

What is your opinion of this?

TMT

----


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ntiterrorrules

Truckers bristle at anti-terror rules

By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY

Con-Way Transportation Services' truck drivers mostly haul common
household products such as house paint and nail polish - potentially
hazardous to the environment if a truck tipped over, but hardly weapons
of mass destruction.

Yet the company's 12,000-plus drivers soon will have to submit to
fingerprinting and FBI background checks to drive their goods around
the country. The checks are part of a new anti-terrorism program
ordered by Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The
program is aimed at making sure no one out to do harm can get hold of
potentially lethal loads of hazardous substances.
snip

It gets worse.

We have a small (relatively) production facility in Canada. New
regulations require that all workers be specially trained in "spotting"
tampering with the goods as well as terrorist paranoia security
proceedures, US government inspectors can come in any time they want to
check this training and fully inspect security documents and procedures,
all goods ready for shipment are supposed to be parked in a locked cage
seperate from other areas of the plant and only high security trained
people are supposed to have access to that cage, It has to go on trucks
and through shipping companies that follow the same procedures, plus a
hundred pages of other "details". OR...you can have the goods sit at
the border for an unknown period of time waiting for clearance (if it
ever comes).

All of this for fabricated metal goods in stainless and carbon steel.
Same rules apply whether you have 100 square feet or a million. In our
case, a locked area for outgoing goods will take up about 1/5 of our
production space because the forklift needs room to manouver with large
crates (oh yea..the forklift is supposed to be inspected when it enters
the cage to make sure that nothing terror related has been hidden on it!).

Clearly, this will have absolutely no effect on terrorist actions and is
only designed as window dressing and to run up costs for the smaller guy.

And you can still walk across the border anywhere (even at a major
border crossing) with little likelyhood of being stopped at all.

Koz