Why Mexico Freight Is the Biggest Opportunity in Brokerage Right Now

This is the first post in the Mexico Freight Playbook series.

I got into Mexico freight by accident. I was working carrier sales at a large brokerage, covering loads, building relationships with carriers — and I kept gravitating toward the cross-border stuff because nobody else wanted to touch it. The margins were great. The freight was interesting. And I was one of the only people on a floor of hundreds who understood how it worked.

One day the COO walked over to my desk and said, "Your new job is to go grow the Mexico business." So I flew to Laredo, met with a customs broker, won our first real cross-border customer, and started building relationships with carriers up and down the border.

When I got back, I sent an email to the entire sales floor about what I'd learned — the margin opportunity, the industries, the lanes. Within days, sales reps were reaching out: "I have a customer with Mexico freight. Can you hop on a call with me?" So I started jumping on customer calls as the Mexico expert. And every time, I could say, "I know exactly who's going to take this freight. I can name three carriers right now." That credibility came from having covered the freight myself.

That was the beginning. I went on to build Mexico operations at two different companies and train dozens of sales teams on how to actually win this business.

But back in 2015, selling and moving Mexico freight felt like operating in a different decade. We were using Nextels to communicate with carriers in Mexico. Updates were fuzzy, handoffs were manual, and a "simple" border move could turn into a 20-text-message logistics exercise just to understand where the trailer was and who had it.

That experience is why I built Cargado. Mexico freight isn't inherently impossible — it's just been underserved by modern workflow and modern market data. We're building the marketplace and infrastructure layer so brokers can reliably find capacity, run clean execution across multiple legs, and price with confidence using real carrier bids.

This is the guide I wish I'd had when I started. Let's go deep.

Q: Why should I care about Mexico freight when I've got plenty of domestic business?

Here's the thing: trade with Mexico and Canada continues to increase while trade with China decreases. Nearshoring isn't a trend — it's a structural shift in how North American supply chains work. Manufacturing is moving closer to end consumers, and Mexico is the biggest beneficiary.

But here's what really matters for your business:

The margin opportunity is substantial. Cross-border freight consistently pays more than domestic — and it's not close. Open deck in particular is one of the most lucrative segments in all of freight brokerage right now.

I've seen brokers go from zero Mexico experience to running profitable operations within 36 hours of their first load. The freight is there. The margin is there. The question is whether you're going to capture it.

Q: How do I actually find shippers that have Mexico freight?

Three methods that work:

Go into your TMS right now and pull every load that picks up or delivers in a border city: Laredo, El Paso, McAllen, Brownsville, Eagle Pass, Nogales.

If it's picking up or delivering in Laredo (or any border city except San Diego), it's almost certainly going across the border. Those "J&J Forwarding" deliveries in Laredo? That freight is going to Mexico. You just don't know it yet.

Call your customer: "I noticed this load delivers to a forwarder in Laredo. Can I take this all the way into Mexico for you? Door-to-door, no one touches the freight at the border, better visibility, less risk of damage."

That's an instant conversation opener.

Here's a real example of what this looks like in practice. I got a call from a guy I used to work with in a previous job. He'd moved into a role at a CPG company that was bringing temp-controlled food product out of Mexico — guacamole, specifically — into their distribution centers in the Midwest. And he said, "We have no idea when our freight is actually going to show up. We don't know when it's going to cross. We just get it in Laredo and try to pick it up from there, and half the time we've got a truck pre-arranged that ends up sitting at the border because the load didn't cross in time."

The problem? Their copacker in Mexico was handling the transportation. Freight was moving from the copacker's facility to the border, and the shipper had no visibility, no control, and no ability to plan.

I told him: go back to your copacker and tell them you're going to pick it up from their facility. You take over the move from origin in Mexico all the way to your warehouse. Once they did that, the detention charges disappeared. The border delays went away. They had complete visibility from the moment the truck left Mexico to when it rolled into their dock. They cut the risk, cut the cost, and completely controlled their supply chain.

This is one of the most underrated conversations you can have with a customer: "Do you actually control your cross-border moves, or is someone else handing it off to you at the border?" If the answer is the latter — if there's a copacker, a supplier, or a forwarder making those arrangements — that's your opening. Step in. Take over the full move. Give them visibility they've never had. That's how you win sticky, recurring freight.

This sounds old school because it is. Walk through Home Depot, Lowe's, or any retailer. Read the labels. "Made in Mexico" or "Hecho en México" means there's freight moving.

Now trace it back: Who's the manufacturer? Where's their U.S. distribution? Who's handling their transportation? That's your target.

Some industries are loaded with Mexico freight:

If you have customers in these categories, they have Mexico freight. They might just not know you can help with it.

Here's a pro tip I've shared with dozens of sales teams: don't just go after the big OEM. Go after their supplier base. Google "Nissan Sentra suppliers" and you'll find one of those pictures of a car with all the different logos pointing off it — that's a feeding frenzy. Every one of those suppliers is receiving parts from or shipping parts to Mexico.

Even better — pull up Google Maps around a major OEM facility. The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga has an entire industrial park surrounding it: Gestamp, Yanfeng, Grupo Antolin, Faurecia, Schnellecke — all Tier 1 suppliers receiving components from Mexico every day. Nobody is cold-calling those companies about Mexico freight. I had a customer like that outside Nashville — a Tier 2 supplier for Nissan making seat frames. Two trucks a day, and I kept them for years because nobody else knew they existed.

If you have someone on your team who knows Mexico freight — who's been covering loads, talking to carriers, sending WhatsApp messages all day — and that's all they're doing, you are wasting your most valuable resource.

I lived this. The credibility I built from covering Mexico freight is what made me effective on customer calls. But the value was on the sales side — helping reps close deals they couldn't close on their own. That's what grew the business, not the WhatsApp threads.

Your Mexico person shouldn't be buried in carrier communication all day. They should be on customer calls with your sales reps, selling Mexico as a service. Get a Spanish-speaking operations person to handle the carrier communication, the customs broker coordination, the pickup scheduling. Let your Mexico expert do what only they can do: walk into a customer conversation and instantly demonstrate that your company knows how to move freight across the border.

And if that person has never been in a "sales" role — don't let that hold you back. They don't need to be a closer. They're an expert. They understand the details — the lanes, the carriers, the border process, the pricing dynamics. They'll ask the right questions because they've lived it. And any shipper with Mexico freight will look right past whether someone has traditional sales experience the moment that person starts talking about how customs clearance actually works or which carriers run the Monterrey-to-Laredo corridor every day. Expertise is the sale.

Once you're on those calls, do 80% of the work for the sales rep. They still get paid their commission on freight they never could have closed alone. You build the Mexico book. The customer finally has someone who actually understands their cross-border headache. Everyone wins.

Here's how you get the pipeline moving: send an email to your entire sales floor. Not a generic "we do Mexico now" announcement — list the specific industries and commodities that signal Mexico freight. Automotive parts, appliances, electronics, tequila, paper products. When you name those commodities, salespeople self-identify. They go, "Oh, I have a customer that ships automotive parts" or "My customer is a supplier for that company." That's your pipeline.

And go after the medium-sized accounts, not the enterprise logos. Everyone's calling Coke and Heineken and Home Depot. Literally everybody. The lesser-known companies — the Tier 2 suppliers, the regional manufacturers — are going to be your best customers because nobody else is sprinting after their Mexico freight.

Q: Do I need to hire people for Mexico?

Not at first. And definitely not before you have real volume.

The biggest mistake I see is people thinking they need to set up an office in Laredo or hire a team in Monterrey before they move their first load. Don't overbuild. Here's how to think about staffing as you grow:

You don't need anyone dedicated to Mexico yet. Your existing team can handle this.

Pick one person — someone curious, someone who wants to learn — and let them own the early loads. They're not full-time on Mexico. They're just the person who figures it out when Mexico freight comes up.

That person builds expertise with each shipment. They learn the carriers. They understand the lanes. They know which customs brokers are reliable. But they're still doing their regular job.

Once you have five or more customers giving you volume on a weekly basis, it's time to lean in.

Now you want someone devoting real time — not necessarily full-time, but meaningful time — to selling Mexico to your other customers. This is the person who starts asking every account manager: "Hey, does your customer have any Mexico freight?"

They're still not dedicated full-time. But Mexico is now a real part of their job, not just something they handle when it comes up.

This is the inflection point where you need to make a real hire.

When you have daily volume from several customers, you'll need an operations person who is fluent in Spanish. Their job is to talk to the customs brokers and facilities in Mexico, coordinate with your U.S. ops team and account managers, and make sure freight moves smoothly.

Here's how I sourced this talent in the past: I walked the sales floor and found the Spanish speakers. That's it. I went up to them and said, "You and you — come with me. This will be way more interesting than what you're doing right now." If their family's from Mexico, they're usually excited about the opportunity. It feels personal to them.

They don't need experience with Mexico freight. They don't need to know what a DODA is or how a border crossing works. They just need to be fluent in Spanish. You'll teach them the freight side. What you can't teach is the language or culture.

This person doesn't need to be in Mexico. They can be anywhere. But they need to speak Spanish fluently, and you need to position this little team as a centralized shared resource for your entire sales floor — not as an individual contributor buried in one book of business. Every rep at your company should know: when Mexico freight comes up, call this team.

Your U.S. account managers stay focused on the customer relationship. Your Spanish-speaking ops person handles the Mexico-side coordination. They work together.

Once you're running serious volume on a daily basis, you're building a real department. Now you might consider:

But don't jump to Stage 4 until you've earned it. Most brokers stall out because they overbuild too early, not because they underinvest.

Q: What should my first year look like?

Q: I'm at a top 25 broker. What's "serious" Mexico volume?

Here's how I'd frame it:

A good ops rep can handle 5-10 cross-border loads per day. That math drives your team size at every stage:

The top brokers are moving upwards of 1,000 loads per day cross-border. At 250+ daily loads, Mexico becomes a meaningful part of your story and you have a real functional department — including an office in Mexico. Below that, it's a growing business unit. Above that, it's a competitive moat.

The margin opportunity is real. The competitive moat is real. The growth trajectory is real.

The only question is whether you're going to capture it or watch someone else do it.

I've helped build two successful Mexico departments. I've trained dozens of sales teams. And I can tell you with certainty: the brokers who lean into this now will have a structural advantage for years to come.

The freight is hiding in your book. Go find it.

Next in this series: The Sales Playbook for Mexico Freight — how to get into accounts and win the business.

Have questions about getting started? Drop me a note. I love talking about this stuff.