More volume. Stagnant margin.
Review your financial statements for this year. Then read the industry news.
They don’t add up. That contradiction is the starting point of everything.
Cross-border freight rates between Mexico and the United States have risen between 8 and 15% since February , with the epicenter in Laredo. Uber Freight reported up to 10 loads waiting for each available truck. The industry itself projects increases of 25 to 35% for the full year .
And the corridor is at its peak: $872.8 billion in bilateral trade in 2025, a historic record ; in April alone, road transport crossed $64.2 billion, 23.4% more than a year earlier .
On the other side of the income statement, the pincer movement, documented by the same sector.
Diesel went from 22.50 to almost 29-30 pesos per liter, until the federal government intervened with a cap of 28 ; today it takes more than 40% of a transport company’s income .
Insurance premiums rose 34% this year, after an 18% increase last year : the cause is road safety concerns, not inflation. And the industry standard is that for every peso diesel price increases, freight rates rise by 4% , while customers reject the rate hike “because it’s temporary.”
You get paid more per trip. You earn the same or less.
And the outcome already has a number: half of Mexican trucking will close 2026 without profits , and some are already operating at a loss.
The easy answer is that 2026 is a bad year. The cycle corrects itself; we just have to hang in there. However, this logic has two flaws:
- The profit margin that returns with the cycle will be reaped by those who are still operating by then. And continuing to operate is precisely what half the sector may not be able to do.
- Insurance premiums didn’t rise 34% because of oil prices. They rose because of highway robberies . That cost won’t decrease when diesel prices fall.
If holding on isn’t enough, the question changes: where did the margin go?
The usefulness doesn’t disappear. It moves.
Clayton Christensen formulated it as a law: profit is concentrated in the link of the chain where performance still falls short for the customer, where the problem remains unresolved. When that link matures and anyone can solve it just as well, it becomes a commodity , and the price is set by the competition. The margin migrates to the next link where the customer still can’t get what they need.
It happened to IBM. When any manufacturer could assemble an equally good computer, the profit shifted to the chip and the operating system, where performance still fell short. Intel and Microsoft stopped at the limitations. IBM stuck to what they had already solved.
Now apply it to cross-border transport in Mexico.
Moving cargo is already solved. Thirty years of free trade perfected it: any of 20 carriers can transport it from origin to destination equally well, and that’s why the rate is decided by auction. It’s the commodity link .
What the customer still can’t get is something else : that the cargo arrives without theft, without delays at the border, and with proof of each delivery. They can’t buy that even if they want to pay for it. That’s the constraint, and that’s where the profit margin lies.
And the raw material to address the constraint is already generated by your operations on every trip. It’s called operational evidence . What follows is a roadmap for how to leverage it.
The map of opportunities
The Logistics Pulse 2026 mentions that nearshoring can bring an additional $35 to $50 billion in the next decade, concentrated in four sectors.
Automotive: those who prove origin stop competing on price
In the review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) , Washington proposed raising the regional content requirement from 75 to 82 percent . This may not pass. No matter, the agreement entered a cycle of annual reviews that could extend until 2036 , and each review is a source audit.
You already generate the evidence: Bill of Lading, GPS, proof of delivery. Today it’s scattered; compiled in a file for each trip, it’s the evidence your client will have to present.
The decision: sell the service as a product and get CTPAT/OEA certified ( 70% fewer inspections ). You withdraw from the bidding process when renewing with you costs the client less than auditing another provider.
Electronics: Guaranteed time is the broker’s highest-paying service.
Mexico accounts for 85% of Latin America’s high-tech exports (Pulsómetro 2026). A one-hour delay at the border halts operations at a plant in Texas, and the fast lane has already quantified the impact: FAST carriers save an average of 27 minutes per crossing ; at 20 crossings per week, that’s nine hours of delay avoided. “We arrive on time” without evidence isn’t a promise: it’s an opinion.
The decision: guaranteed cross-border windows, sealed arrival time, and our own price. Same truck. Different product. Different price.
Medical devices: custody is the entry ticket, and few sell it.
The FDA, the US health regulator, and Cofepris, its Mexican equivalent, require that each batch travels with documented custody and the manufacturer is obligated to audit whoever moves it .
The decision: a custody file per batch and per trip, with good distribution practices. The reward is a lock : you become part of your client’s regulatory file, and changing it means reopening an audit.
Processed foods: every undefended deduction is a free margin
The buyer validates each delivery using systems (16.9% of retailers adopt AI), while the transport company documents it manually (6.2%). Discrepancies regarding missing items, appointments, and condition are resolved in favor of the party with the record.
The decision: a conciliation file per delivery, as a service, with its own price. Documenting at the buyer’s level doesn’t win disputes. It eliminates them.
The method and the table
I know what you’re thinking: “I need a system.”
Stop. If the file is scattered across emails, GPS devices, and Excel spreadsheets, a new system will only exacerbate the chaos. Elon Musk’s rule for broken processes applies in full: first question and eliminate, then simplify and accelerate, and automation comes last, because automating the chaos only scales it . The logistical version: a single file per trip, delivered in hours, with its own price tag. Because the guarantee that travels free within the fare is valued at zero by the customer.
Even with that resolved, there’s still something money can’t buy: peers. Sharing builds trust, trust builds business, and the cluster advances faster than any single company: that’s how the aerospace industry in Querétaro took off. That’s why the ConaLog Logistics Dialogues exist —the forum where corridor operators share what works, including names, numbers, and methods.
Volume no longer pays. Certainty of the journey does.
The corridor split into two markets. In the first, kilometers are sold : the price is decided by auction, and the lowest bidder always wins. There, the record fare of 2026 will be remembered as the highest that no one ever captured. In the second, certainty is sold : documentation, guarantees, and a set price. That’s where the new cargo lands.
And there’s a clock ticking. Capacity has stopped being renewed; sales of heavy vehicles fell 35.7% in January , on a fleet with an average age of 19 years . When capacity dwindles, those who remain set the price. Those who also sell certainty come to that table with an extra advantage.
Same trucks. Same border. The difference is who prepared before the cargo arrived, which pays differently.
Connect and comment with Gibrán via LinkedIn .
Comment and follow us on LinkedIn: @GrupoT21
