Border to Run Smoother, Predicts Customs Czar’s Right Hand

(Today’s Trucking)

Within the next 15 years, many of your trucks should be able to zip through Canada-U.S. border crossings without stopping. That’s the prediction of one of America’s most influential customs officials, Thomas Winkowski, who bears the weighty title “Assistant Commissioner, Office of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Essentially, he’s second in command when it comes to customs and he was addressing a Customs-and-Trade-Compliance conference in Toronto when he made the prediction, in response to a question from the floor.

“In the next 10 to 15 years, the border’s going to be completely different,” he said. “It isn’t going to be a border where everything has to stop. It’s all going to be electronic.”

Winkowski said that new customs-clearance protocols, when they’re completely in place, will mean that any carrier crossing the border will have to be “a trusted partner” of CBP, as will the shippers and manufacturers and drivers. All data about all parties will be available online, so there will be no need for drivers to stop and identify themselves or explain their loads.

Of course in order to reach that goal, he said, the program must have buy-in from all the government agencies involved in all three countries, U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Read more here.