C.H. Robinson announces opening of new Port of Laredo cross-border facility

With an eye on bolstering United States-Mexico cross-border trade activity, Minneapolis, Minn.-based global logistics services provider and freight forwarder C.H. Robinson said today it has opened up a new facility at Texas-based Port of Laredo. The company planned and built out this facility over the last 18 months.

Company officials said that the Port of Laredo is one of the largest cross docks in Laredo, serving as the country’s top inland port, adding that the C.H. Robinson has had a global trade presence there going back more than 30 years. The 400,000 square-foot facility includes 154 dock doors with room for 700 trailers and expands its Mexican border footprint to 1.5 million square-feet. The company also noted that most cross-docks in Laredo are single-sided, whereas this facility is one of the few with dock doors on both sides, which it said greatly accelerates the transfer of freight from Mexico carriers to U.S. carriers.

What’s more, C.H. Robinson observed that the Port of Laredo handled $268 billion in trade with Mexico in 2022, a 20% annual improvement over 2021, and, in February, it became the busiest border crossing in the country. And it is in close proximity to several Mexico-based manufacturing centers, including automotive-heavy Monterrey, with auto parts representing the top product moving through the port, in terms of tonnage and value.

“Unlike competitors with much smaller footprints in Laredo and new competitors just now trying to get a toehold, C.H. Robinson manages more than 1 million trucking, intermodal, ocean and air shipments a year in this region and has been continually growing here in tandem with our customers’ growth,” said Mike Burkhart, C.H. Robinson’s Vice President for Mexico, in a statement. “We meticulously designed our newest facility to give our global shippers the greater scale, speed and service they need as they move more of their interests to Mexico.” 

Burkhart provided additional details on this new facility in an interview with LM.

When asked what drove the need for CHR open this new facility, he explained that the pandemic was an eye-opener for many companies, in that it made them eager to diversify their supply chain across modes, trade lanes and countries, in order to spread out their risks. He also noted that the political tensions with China and Russia have also been a catalyst for nearshoring.

“Mexico has without a doubt been a major beneficiary of this trend,” he said. “For example, we recently helped an automotive customer shift their entire supply chain to a 50-50 split between eastern Europe and Mexico. This year, Mexico became the United States’ No. 1 trading partner—topping both China and Canada—and nearshoring now accounts for about 1 of every 4 square feet of industrial space in Mexico. Why Mexico? Instead of your product taking a five-week trip from China to the United States, a five-day trip from Mexico is pretty attractive. But Mexico is a magnet not only because of its proximity to U.S. consumers. Companies are moving more manufacturing to Mexico because of its good access to inputs, its labor force and its trade incentives. Mexico offers some of the most free-trade agreements of any country.”

As previously stated, the automotive sector is where CHR is seeing much of this growth, with Mexico producing about 270 million cars for export every year, with 76% of those intended for the United States, according to Burkhart.

“Making parts is also a huge business in Mexico, and the No. 1 product that crosses at Laredo is auto parts,” he said. “C.H. Robinson does business with the majority of the top 10 automakers and the top 100 Tier 1 parts suppliers, so we built this facility to speed up cross-border shipping especially for them and for other customers that operate in a just-in-time environment.”  

As for the biggest customer benefits the Laredo facility offers and provides, he explained CHR believes it is the largest double-sided cross-dock in Laredo and is specifically designed to help large global shippers move their inventory faster.

“It typically takes three trucks to bring a shipment through Laredo,” he said. “A Mexico carrier brings the trailer to the border, a Mexico transfer carrier takes it across, then the freight is unloaded and reloaded onto a U.S. carrier’s trailer. All that freight is funneling through a limited number of truck lanes. With the growth in nearshoring, the growth of cross-border loads and more growth to come in the next five years, it’s at the cross-dock where a shipper can get greater throughput.”

Another key benefit he cited was that more than one-third of Laredo’s industrial inventory is facilities in the 100,000 square-feet to 250,000 square-feet range, and at 400,000 square-feet., CHR’s cross-dock is larger than most.

“Because our cross-dock is significantly larger than most, has more dock doors than most and has dock doors on both sides, we can immediately unload freight when it arrives,” said Burkhart. “There’s no waiting, and the freight has dedicated floor space. When you think of a building like an LTL terminal with dock doors on both sides, it’s long and narrow. Our cross-dock is long and fat, with plenty of room in the middle so you can offload trailers simultaneously from each side of the building and have room for the freight until the truck arrives to pick it up.  A large double-sided cross-dock also reduces the reloading time, because forklift drivers don’t have to crisscross all over the building. In a more typical transloading facility, it might take two minutes to get a pallet. We can do that in seconds.”

C.H. Robinson has been doing business in Laredo for more than 30 years and already had more than one cross-dock in Laredo, said Burkhart. The new facility brings C.H. Robinson’s footprint there to 660,000 square-feet, and its footprint across the entire southern border to well over 1.5 million square-feet, he said.  CHR’s other facilities in Laredo can be used for project freight, and it also helps customers set up dedicated warehouse space for their supply chains, he stated. 

“Compared to competitors who have a smaller footprint along the Mexico border and competitors just getting a toehold in the market, we have the scale and the experience to manage the growth that’s coming in the next five years,” he said. “Much of the new foreign investment in Mexico hasn’t even translated into freight yet. We’re in the early innings of this nearshoring trend. Whether you’re a manufacturer growing in Mexico or a company newly nearshoring there, you need in-country experts in all the shipping processes, laws and regulations specific to Mexico and specific to cross-border trade. You need the right expertise and facilities for every facet of your supply chain: ocean or air shipping to bring in your raw materials, warehousing, trucking or intermodal to get your product to and over the border, and clearance for Customs and other government agencies. And I can’t emphasize enough how much relationships matter when you’re doing business in Mexico. Relationships are king.”