Safe Speed Forums

TEPEJI DEL RIO, Mexico - As the sun sets over Mexico's Interstate 57, barreling down the road comes a bizarre sight: a man balanced on a wooden seat, zipping along on what appears to be nothing but four wheels and an engine.

It's a "spiderman," one of hundreds of daredevil drivers who shuttle unfinished trucks and buses, or frames, between factories in Mexico. With no windshield, seat belt or even a bumper, it's like riding a go-kart at 70 mph, an adrenaline junkie's dream job.

"I used to be a paratrooper in the army. This is the closest I can get to jumping out of airplanes," said Lucio Ceja Hernández, who has been a chassis jockey for eight years.

The bare-bones vehicles he drives are called chasis arañas, or spider chassis, because their sprawling axles and exposed wires make them look like giant bugs. Truckers call the drivers arañeros, or spidermen.

"But mainly they just call us crazy," said Fidel Ramírez Legazpi, who has been wrangling spiders on Mexican highways since 1987.

Beneath the derring-do, there is a sobering lesson about Mexico: here, it's cheaper to pay a man to risk his life than it is to ship a chassis by auto carrier.

And it's a growing, business. Companies such as Mercedes-Benz, International, General Motors, Volkswagen and Freightliner built a record 70,233 truck chassis last year in Mexico. Of those, 11,224 were turned into buses or minibuses by Mexican subcontractors such as AYCO, Hidromex, Eurocar and Marco Polo.

To get the "spiders" from truck factories to bus factories, then to dealerships, the industry relies on ferry companies. Each employs dozens of drivers, but only veterans are assigned chassis runs.

"It's very risky, so we want people who know what they're doing," said América Rosas, route supervisor for ferry company Multitraslados y Servicios.

Night riders

The spidermen prefer to drive at night, when it's cooler and the traffic is lighter. So late every afternoon, men like Ceja and Ramírez line up at factories such as the Mercedes-Benz plant in the industrial city of Monterrey, in northern Mexico, or the International plant in nearby Escobedo to pick up their spiders.

The bare chassis are hard to drive because they're so light. The most dangerous are bus chassis, the long kind with heavy diesel engines in the rear. Those like to fishtail.

"They lack weight, they lack stability, and if you take a curve too fast in rain they skid. They skate across the road and you can't control them." Ceja said.

Workers at the truck factory nail together a makeshift seat out of two-by-fours behind the steering wheel. The seats are notoriously rickety; Ceja carries 3-inch nails and a hammer to reinforce them before he hits the road.

Some drivers bring their own leather seat belts, but most don't use them.

"It's safer that way," Ramírez said. "If you flip, you'll get crushed under the chassis itself. If you don't have a seatbelt, you can jump, or at least be thrown off."

Mexican law requires each chassis to have two headlights and two taillights, known somewhat morbidly as calaveras, or skulls. Most drivers carry their own portable lights and hook them up to the exposed wires. Some drivers attach a piece of plywood to the dashboard to help protect against the wind.

The trip from Monterrey to the AYCO factory in Huehuetoca, 60 miles north of Mexico City, takes between 12 and 17 hours, depending on whether a driver stops to catch few hours of sleep.

It's a grueling ride through mountains and deserts. Ice coats the roads in winter. In the summer, the sun beats down on the uncovered chassis. Blinding rainstorms short out the drivers' lights and drench their clothes.

When it's cold, truckers sometimes slow down and let the chassis drivers tuck in behind them for a momentary respite from the wind.

Bandits prowl the highways at night, but they rarely bother the chassis drivers because there's nothing to steal. Most drivers carry little more than a plastic bag containing the chassis' hood ornament, such as the three-pointed star of Mercedes-Benz or the orange, diamond-shaped logo of International.

There is no CB radio or stereo to listen to, just the howling wind for hours on end. But drivers can't let their minds wander.

"You don't have time to think," Ceja said. "You're accelerating, you're braking, you're watching out for this guy, another guy is cutting you off. You can never relax."

On many Mexican highways, slower traffic is expected to straddle the edge lines so that other vehicles can squeeze by them in the right lane.

That leaves the chassis jockeys driving on the shoulder of the road, just inches from the edge of the asphalt.

For this ordeal, chassis drivers earn about 6 cents a mile. That's $30 for the exhausting 510-mile journey from Monterrey to Huehuetoca.

Still, it's more than regular truckers earn in Mexico. And chassis drivers don't have to wait around while cargo is loaded. Most drivers make three or four trips a week.

The delivery fee is a pittance compared with the chassis themselves, which can cost $35,000 to $60,000 and usually account for two-thirds of the cost of a bus.

Vehicle-makers could have the chassis delivered on trucks, but that requires special unloading equipment, said Javier Benítez, AYCO's plant manager. In the time it takes to fill an auto carrier, a chassis jockey can be 100 miles down the road.

Risky business

Spidermen tell horror stories of comrades who were launched like torpedoes in crashes or stoned by flying gravel from passing trucks. But the Mexican government doesn't differentiate between trucks and bare chassis when counting accidents, so it's hard to know exactly how risky the job is.

Still, no one doubts the danger of Mexican roads, which are often in bad shape and plagued by speeders and spotty law enforcement. There were 35.7 deaths per 100,000 vehicles in Mexico in 2000, the latest year for which statistics are available. That was nearly twice the U.S. average of 19.3 that year.

The most dangerous areas were the border states of Baja California and Chihuahua.

As the highways get more congested, some vehicle-makers say they're getting worried about the liability of sending spidermen down the roads.

"They leave a lot to be desired in terms of safety," Benítez said. "We've been trying to get them to change by working with the (truck and bus manufacturer's association), but it's a long process."

Because of the pressure, most ferry companies now require helmets and some sort of protective clothing, like a leather motorcycle suit, said Rosas, the route supervisor. There are mandatory rest stops, and the companies will pay for hotel rooms on long trips.

"It's not like before. Before, you had nothing but a ski mask and goggles, and you had to use hand signals," said Manuel Andrades, who has been driving for seven years. "Now we've got turn signals and helmets, so it's a little bit safer."

Eventually, Mexico's traffic and labor laws may catch up with the United States and put an end to the spidermen. But for now, business is booming.

The number of bare chassis produced in Mexico rose 28 percent from 2004 to 2005. Exports of finished buses to other Latin America and Caribbean countries quadrupled, and the industry is expecting another strong year in 2006.

"They need us because we move these vehicles fast and with no hassles," Ramírez said. "It's hard work, and it's risky. It's not for everybody, but I love it."