SAN DIEGO (AP) — The first Mexican carrier is set to roll into the U.S. interior within days, but the Teamsters union and two California congressmen haven't given up on stopping the cross-border trucking program that had been stalled for years by safety concerns and political wrangling.



U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter and Bob Filner joined Teamsters President James Hoffa at the border Wednesday to take a bipartisan stand against the pilot project that will allow approved Mexican trucks to come deep into the United States. The first one will enter Texas on Friday.



Hunter is a San Diego-area Republican, while Filner is a Democrat whose district includes California's border with Mexico. They were surrounded at a news conference by more than 75 union members from at least five states.

Allowing Mexican trucking companies to deliver goods rather than transfer them to U.S. haulers at the border will put American jobs and highway safety at risk, they said.



"We're literally taking good jobs here in America and passing them over the line to Mexico," Hunter told the crowd, many holding signs reading "NAFTA kills" and "Stop the war on workers."



Washington on Friday approved the first Mexican trucking company, Transportes Olympic, nearly two decades after the hotly contested provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement set off lawsuits and a costly trade dispute between the neighboring countries.



Transportes Olympic's long-haul truck will cross the border Friday at Laredo, Texas, and head about 450 miles north to Garland, Texas, to deliver industrial equipment, said Guillermo Perez, the transport manager at the firm in the industrial Monterrey suburb of Apodaca, about two hours south of Laredo.