As Cross-Border Trade Explodes, C.H. Robinson Grows Footprint in Laredo

The nearshoring revolution continues to pick up speed. The pull of suppliers into Mexico, especially, is creating an increased need for logistics and border facilities to handle the increase in demand.

Third-party logistics behemoth C.H. Robinson, already a major player in the Laredo, Texas, region, is positioning itself to grow with the region. The company announced today the opening of a 400,000-square-foot cross-border facility featuring 154 dock doors with the capability to handle 700 trailers. The new facility expands Robinson’s footprint in the area to 1.5 million square feet.

“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,” says Mike Burkhart, C.H. Robinson’s vice president for Mexico.

Burkhart said the new facility is one of the few in the area that features dock doors on each side of the facility.

“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,” he adds.

Laredo feeling the trade shift

He tells Supply Chain Management Review that the nearshoring trend is driving the need for a facility such as this – it is the third Robinson facility in Laredo and gives the company more than 660,000 square feet of space in the region.

“Along the southern border, we’re feeling it along every point of entry, but there is no point where this is more evident than Laredo,” he says, noting that Mexico is on track to overtake China as the top U.S. trade partner.

The amount of freight moving across the border is up 20% through the first six months, Burkhart says, adding that trade coming through Laredo is from the “heart of Mexico. All of that production goes right through Laredo.”
Freight moving across the border can be handled several times before it is loaded onto a U.S. carrier for delivery inside the U.S. The new facility, Burkhart notes, will speed this process.

“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,” he says. “It also reduces the reloading time, because forklift drivers don’t have to crisscross the building. On a day when 350 loads are being picked up, if you reduce load time by an average of 10 minutes, that saves nearly 60 hours in one day.”       

Robinson points out that the Port of Laredo handled $268 billion in trade with Mexico last year, up 20% since 2021. Burkhart says C.H. Robinson handles about 1 million shipments annually in the region.

Diversifying supply chains

In a Supply Chain Management Review article published on April 25, Jonathan Civita, a principal of Madison Ventures+, pointed to a January 2022 survey of C-suite executives found that 90% of those surveyed said they were in the process of moving production out of China or had plans to do so.

“Investment in Mexico is clearly expanding, and it has quickly become the biggest beneficiary of nearshoring. The country’s close proximity, familiarity to U.S. businesses, and competitive labor rates are extremely attractive. In addition, Mexico possesses a reliable labor pool and has a long trade history with the United States,” he wrote.
In Laredo, the number-one product moving through the port is auto parts, but Burkart says that healthcare and food and beverage is also seeing investment and increased import volumes in the region.

“Nearshoring has always been there, but I think the pandemic was the initial eyeopener and it really threw the flames on the fire,” he says. “It’s just people really eager to diversify their supply chains. If you think of nearshoring, it [now] counts for 1 out of every 4 square feet in Mexico. It’s always been there, but I think it’s been put into overdrive since the pandemic.”

The growth in the region has also created more congestion. Laredo has 255,205 residents, as of the 2020 Census, so it is not small compared to many places, but it is growing. The border town is now the largest inland port on the Mexican border. The Laredo Economic Development Corporation estimates that the region handled $299.4 billion in total trade in 2022, with 5.5 million trucks crossing the border. Through May, the agency reported trade was up 10.49% year-over-year.

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