Mexico Truckers Agree to Talks After Strike Hits 19 States

Mexico's Interior Ministry and the country's main trucking organizations struck an agreement Tuesday to open negotiations, after a nationwide strike disrupted highways across 19 states and idled nearly 700 vehicles in a single morning.

The deal calls for four high-level working sessions covering highway security, infrastructure, tax incentives and regulations — the full basket of grievances Mexican carriers have carried for years. The talks bring together Segob officials and the industry's most powerful groups, led by the National Chamber of Freight Transport (CANACAR).

The protests began Monday, with truckers demanding government action on cargo theft, violent highway robbery, extortion and rising operating costs. The Interior Ministry counted demonstrations at 38 locations across 19 states that morning — 691 vehicles and 858 participants in total, staging truck convoys, roadside gatherings and outright highway blockades.

CANACAR says the government is undercounting. The chamber claims the movement actually spread across all 32 Mexican states. When the protester count is the dispute, not the protest itself, you know the relationship has room to improve.

Who's at the table?

CANACAR President Augusto Ramos Melo met Tuesday with Interior Ministry officials, flanked by Carlos García Álvarez of the Honorable Mexican Alliance of Transport Organizations (HAMOTAC) and Lauro Rincón Hernández of the Mexican-American Federation of Transporters (FEMATRAC).

After the meeting, Ramos Melo announced the four negotiating sessions aimed at answering the industry's demands. Trade and freight officials had raised alarms about supply chain delays before the agreement came together, according to La Jornada, T21 and Revista Transportes y Turismo.

What does this change for shippers?

Not much yet, honestly. The organizations haven't confirmed that all demonstrations have ended, and earlier Tuesday CANACAR and its allies urged participants to keep up peaceful protests at strategic highway locations while the talks were being arranged. Translation: pressure stays on until something concrete emerges from the sessions.

For cross-border shippers, the stakes sit on the freight corridors that carry U.S.-Mexico trade — the same lanes already strained by organized cargo theft and violent robberies that Mexican carriers say the government has tolerated too long. Any renewed blockades would land directly on those routes and the forwarders depending on them.

The grievances behind the blockades

The protests didn't appear from nowhere. Mexican trucking companies have spent years flagging:

• Cargo theft and violent highway robberies targeting drivers
• Extortion rackets squeezing carriers along key corridors
• Rising operating costs for commercial vehicles
• Regulatory and tax burdens the industry wants reworked

Those four negotiating sessions map almost one-to-one onto that list. Whether the talks produce enforcement, money or merely minutes remains the open question.

The negotiations will now determine whether carriers face fresh disruptions in the coming days, or whether Mexico's freight network gets the security and cost relief its truckers have been demanding — one working session at a time.