It took Daniel, a truck driver, eight hours to leave the Bajío region of Mexico, between the time it took to dispatch the client and the road conditions along his route. He finally headed towards the port of Manzanillo with a full load of containers. But another obstacle still lay in store for him.
Daniel’s commute between the cities of Tecomán and Manzanillo, both in Colima and 58 kilometers apart, which normally took him about two hours, turned into an eight-hour ordeal due to the traffic congestion caused by the highway expansion work on the road to Colima. When he finally managed to move forward and reach the port, his fate was sealed: his appointment to enter the terminal had been canceled , and he would have to wait in a nearby yard or at least somewhere safe on the street for a new assignment.
This story—which began on November 25, 2025, during the expansion phase of the Armería-Manzanillo section and has been repeated for the past four years since the start of the entire project—may change its name, route, or merchandise, but behind it all remains the same reality: the customer’s clock keeps ticking even when the truck stops due to circumstances that the carrier can hardly control.
This scenario is all too common in Mexico. Roadworks , accidents , military or police checkpoints , traffic jams , customs failures, and congested port access points can turn a plan built over days into a matter of hours. And missing a date also means keeping equipment and the operator idle, incurring costs, and jeopardizing the next trip.
Stories abound: a CM Logistics unit spent nearly 12 hours trying to leave Manzanillo. By the time it reached the capital of Colima, 14 hours had passed and there was still a long way to go to reach the north of the country, Eduardo Mendoza, the company’s general manager, told T21.
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