It had 60 trucks, and on the surface, everything seemed fine. The trucks were hitting the road, the trips were being completed, and the cargo kept moving. This isn’t fiction; it’s a real case that recently occurred in the Mexican trucking industry. Even so, the company went out of business. The problem wasn’t a lack of work, but a lack of money. Payments were delayed, cash flow dried up, and within months, the operation became unsustainable. This scene highlights an increasingly common reality in the sector: these days, companies don’t go bankrupt because they can’t sell; they go bankrupt because they can’t get paid .
This is one of the stories that Salvador Bañuelos, a credit and collections specialist, founder and CEO of AFS International , tells T21 to reveal the current challenges facing the sector. Freight transport is experiencing one of its most difficult periods . Lower demand, reduced rates, and deferred payments have squeezed margins and delayed portfolio recovery.
This is a sector with strategic importance: it contributes 3.8% of the national GDP and moves more than 565 million tons per year , that is, 57% of all the cargo that moves in the country, according to figures from the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport (SICT) .
With such a level of participation, any pressure on the transport sector’s liquidity ends up impacting other economic activities. Payment delays hinder fleet operations and affect service delivery, impacting the distribution of goods and the functioning of production and commercial chains.
“Liquidity problems in many sectors are causing delays in the recovery of service providers,” warns John Soldevilla, CEO of Ecobi – Economy, Business & Indicators , a consultancy specializing in economics and industrial indicators.
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