Truck manifest nears completion

Truck manifest nears completion    U.S. Customs and Border Protection will phase in new advance manifest rules for trucks crossing into the United States region by region, probably beginning in the fall, said Betsy Durant, executive director for trade compliance and facilitation.
   The implementation plan follows a similar geographic approach used by the agency to rollout mandatory use of the Air Automated Manifest System for air carriers and freight forwarders. Customs is implementing electronic prefiling of manifests to comply with a new law designed to increase security by requiring information about the contents and history of a shipment before it arrives at a U.S. port. Customs will begin requiring advance air manifests in several states Aug. 13.
   Implementation rules for trucks, which must file manifests at least 30 minutes to one hour ahead of arrival at the border based on certain security criteria, will be published in the Federal Register soon, Durant told a Customs trade advisory group Friday. Customs officials were scheduled to meet Friday with the American Trucking Associations to iron out any details of the security program.
   A truck manifest filing system took longer to complete because it had to be built from scratch, whereas other modes already had partial systems in place that some companies used on a voluntary basis to submit shipping documents to Customs.