WASHINGTON -- Truckers filed more than 10,000 electronic freight manifests in August, a new monthly high for Customs and Border Protection's Automated Commercial Environment.

Lou Samenfink, executive director of the agency's cargo systems program, said that for the week of Aug. 24-31, for example, 2,862 truck e-manifests were filed. Two out of three manifests were filed by way of the ACE Web portal. Five out of six e-manifests were filed at the Canadian border.

While the manifest volume continues to grow, Samenfink said that the system continues to have bugs at some locations. "We're getting a lot of people using it, but we still have problems at certain ports."

Eventually, the system will reduce the overall waiting time for trucks at border crossings, Samenfink said. However, officers at primary border stations still have to shift between ACE and older paper manifest systems, which consumes time.

Truck e-filing is one of the first operating features of ACE, Customs' new computing system, and is planned to be mandatory as part of long-term, post-Sept. 11 cargo security measures.

Samenfink said that Customs also has passed $700 million in importers' monthly duty payments, the other major operational feature of ACE. The system is on track to collect some 30 percent of all duties by the end of the year.

In 2008 Customs will move ocean and rail filing to ACE from the older Automated Commercial system. Air manifest processing will move to ACE in 2009.