Borderlands is a weekly rundown of developments in the world of United States-Mexico cross-border trucking and trade. This week: Truck driver salaries in Mexico averaging $423 a month in 2024; Horizon Auto Logistics opens office in Veracruz, Mexico; LG Electronics opens $60M plant in Central Mexico; and Texas bridge project receives $80 million in federal funding.

Truck driver salaries in Mexico averaging $423 a month in 2024

Wages in Mexico’s professional cargo trucking industry averaged $423 a month during the second quarter of 2024, according to recent statistics from Data Mexico and the Ministry of Economy.

As of the second quarter, the monthly average comes out to $5,076 annually and was an increase of 8.4% from the same period in 2023, when truck driver wages averaged $390 a month.

Mexico’s trucking industry employed 1.18 million people during the second quarter, a 1.7% increase compared to the same year-ago period.

The average age of truck drivers during the quarter was 41 years old. Men make up more than 98% of drivers in the country.

Women, who make up about 1.29% of truck drivers in the country, earned an average salary of $260 a month during the second quarter.

In comparison, recent data from the American Trucking Associations (ATA) found that the average U.S. truck driver made $76,420 in 2023 – a 10% increase over the previous two years.

Salaries across Mexico’s trucking industry varied widely by location, the type of cargo truck or van driven, the size of the company and the industry segment they were employed in.

The highest average salaries for drivers were seen in construction material hauling ($876 a month), mining services ($845 a month), and retail goods ($645 a month).

The industry with the highest concentration of truck drivers included the automotive industry (62,400), food and beverage (60,500) and raw materials (57,500).

The states with the highest number of professional truckers during the second quarter of 2024 were the State of Mexico (172,000), Nuevo Leon (105,000) and Jalisco (102,000).

The truck industry in Mexico accounts for 3.5% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to Data Mexico.

During the recent North American Transportation Forum webinar on trade agreements, nearshoring and trucking, ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said trucking is an important link in the cross-border supply chain between the U.S. and Mexico.

The webinar was hosted by the International Road Union, a global trucking chamber of commerce based in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The data on U.S. inbound trucks highlights the nearshoring that is going on,” Costello said in a news release. “In the early days of the North American Free Trade Agreement, 60% or more of inbound trucks were coming from Canada. Now over the last five years, we have roughly 30% more trucks coming in from Mexico than Canada.”