Record Mexico Truck Border Crossings

Record truck border crossings and surging ground import volumes solidify Mexico as the top U.S. importer, overtaking China’s declining share.

In May alone, 675,000 trucks crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, carrying $32.5 billion in goods—an all-time high for Mexico-to-U.S. imports and a 7.2% year-over-year increase, despite shipping volatility during that period.

Supply Chain professor, Jason Miller dove into the data on LinkedIn:

Top Chart: This chart displays quarterly, not seasonally adjusted, northbound truck crossings from Mexico to the USA. Q2 2024 recorded 1.97 million crossings, up 4.3% year-over-year and a significant 21% increase from Q2 2018—the previous high before the pandemic.

Bottom Chart: This chart shows year-over-year percentage change at the quarterly level. The 4.3% growth in the latest quarter aligns with trends seen from 2016-2018. Notably, growth weakened in 2019 and most of 2023. The biggest outlier is Q4 2021, likely reflecting the impact of U.S. motor vehicle production slowdowns due to component shortages.

What’s Driving the Discrepancy? Mexican manufacturing output is only up ~7% since Q2 2018, yet truck crossings have jumped 20%. Some possible explanations:

• Increased agricultural exports, particularly produce, heading north.
  
• Growth in freight-heavy sectors like Mexican beverage production, with a greater share being sent to the USA.
  
• Finished goods from China being re-labeled as “Made in Mexico” to bypass tariffs before being exported to the USA.

Image: Number of trucks crossing the US-Mexico Border. Source: Motive