U.S. authorities have pulled visas from roughly 25,000 Mexican freight drivers, and cross-border trucking capacity on U.S. lanes to Mexico and Canada is expected to stay constrained through the end of 2026 and into 2027 — even with freight demand soft.

That's the verdict from executives at logistics provider TRAFFIX, whose October North American Cross-Border Index registered 57 for Canada and 54 for Mexico, each down one point from September. Readings above 50 signal tighter conditions: elevated costs, limited truck availability and regulatory friction.

"Rates are going to stay higher for longer," Alex Fuller, TRAFFIX's vice president of commercial intelligence, told FreightWaves. "And we're not going to see the immediate drop like we saw a couple of years ago in rates."

What's different from the pandemic cycle?

Fuller points to two factors: tighter rules on who can operate commercial trucks and the cost of buying equipment. During the pandemic, aspiring owner-operators financed trucks with cheap loans and stimulus money. Today, financing runs 8% to 9%, which prices out new entrants and blocks established carriers from expanding fleets.

"We're only four or five years later and we're not seeing that," Fuller said of the capacity influx that followed the last rate surge. "And it's like, OK, well, what's different?"

The index tracks four components — transportation costs, capacity, demand and trade policy — across more than 10 economic, freight and trade indicators, benchmarked against TRAFFIX's internal freight activity.

The market data backs the tightness. As of Oct. 11, FreightWaves SONAR's Outbound Tender Volume Index for Laredo (STVI.LRD) jumped from 39.95 in mid-September to 51.95, while the Weighted Rejection Index flipped from -0.74 to +0.65 — confirmation that capacity around Laredo is actively tightening.

Mexico: driver shortage plus visa squeeze

Patricio Gutierrez, TRAFFIX's carrier sales manager based in Manzanillo, said Mexico's cross-border sector faces a triple bind: qualified-driver shortages, U.S. immigration restrictions and bottlenecks at border crossings.

"I think that the main issue here is a lack of qualified drivers," Gutierrez said, citing Mexican drivers holding valid B-1 visas and the limited pool of trucks authorized to run in the United States.

The demographics don't help. Many Mexican drivers are in their 50s and 60s, while younger workers avoid the profession over security concerns and low pay. "The shortage of drivers in Mexico is a real problem," Gutierrez said.

C.H. Robinson's October Edge Report, citing Mexican trucking association CANACAR, put the visa withdrawals at about 25,000 drivers. The report also flagged restrictions on southbound empty-truck crossings at Eagle Pass and Brownsville, Texas, from Sept. 9-14, when daily commercial crossings reportedly fell from about 1,000 to between 300 and 400, and nearly 700 tractors were stranded on the U.S. side.

Some carriers rerouted equipment through Laredo, absorbing extra mileage, fuel and transit time. C.H. Robinson warned driver availability could tighten further as fourth-quarter volumes build.

Canada: imbalanced flows, 'no-go' Florida

North of the border, the problem is direction. Lance Halliday, TRAFFIX's Toronto-based regional director of carrier sales, said Canadian export demand remains strong but south-to-north freight is thin, leaving drivers stranded without backhauls.

"There's still a severe lack of inbound," Halliday said. "So there's not a lot of freight coming in from the U.S. into Canada right now."

Some lanes now carry a premium. Halliday said rates on certain corridors have climbed 25% to 35% over the past month to six weeks, and he singled out Florida as a market carriers simply refuse.

"Florida is a no-go zone," Halliday said. "Guys just won't go because they're getting stuck down there for days."

Contract freight is heading to the spot market

What does this change for shippers? Their contract rates, mainly. Carriers are handing back freight commitments negotiated months ago because those rates no longer cover operating costs, pushing loads down carrier-selection lists and onto the spot market.

"We're seeing a lot of that contractual freight handed back by their primary carriers," Halliday said. He added that transactional freight volume on the Canadian side has surpassed COVID-era levels, based on his view of TRAFFIX's own operations.

Gutierrez sees the same dynamic in Mexico, where rising diesel costs and capacity limits have carriers chasing higher rates while some shippers cling to old contract pricing.

Both executives frame this as structural, not seasonal — a mix of higher driver wages, insurance costs and restricted financing rather than a temporary diesel spike. Halliday expects no relief for three to six months, citing driver shortages, trade uncertainty and seasonal capacity drawdowns.

Fuller's bottom line: with little new capacity entering the market, freight rates can stay elevated even without a demand recovery — a squeeze shippers will feel in their rate cards, not in their volume forecasts.