Texas truck inspections costing border industry $32 million a day, Juarez official says

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Juarez industry officials say commercial truck delays at El Paso border crossings are costing them up to $32 million a day.

The delays started on Saturday when the Texas Department of Public Safety resumed enhanced safety inspections of all trucks coming across from Mexico at the Ysleta port of entry and the Bridge of the Americas.

Thor Salayandia, an official with the Mexican Chamber of Industry, said hundreds of trucks with parts and goods headed to the United States remain stranded in line at border crossings or had to turn back with their loads to the factories.

“We don’t know when this is going to end. There are no indications of what comes next,” Salayandia said at a news conference Monday in Juarez. The losses come from the overtime that plants must pay drivers and warehouse employees and could soon be reflected in unfulfilled delivery contracts.

The drivers are also bearing an economic cost, in addition to being the ones forced to wait six to eight hours in the cabs of idling trucks.

“Usually, we make three trips. But today, I won’t be able to come back with another load,” said Martin Campos, a Juarez trucker checking the back of a trailer next to the Ysleta Port of Entry before returning to the lot of an assembly plant early Monday afternoon.

Campos said he waited seven hours to cross into the United States with a load of washing machines and refrigerators on Saturday. By Monday, he wised up and made a 30-mile detour to Tornillo, Texas, where it only took him 25 minutes to get across. He said many other Juarez drivers have begun to take that route instead of the usual straight line from industrial parks in Zaragoza to the nearby Zaragoza International Bridge.

“If we go back (to the factory in Juarez) too late, they will just send us home. That hits all of us in the pocketbook,” Campos lamented. “There is no commercial movement (at Ysleta). […] We have plenty of merchandise to bring across, but we cannot bring it. It affects both countries because the goods don’t get to you guys, either.”

Campos said it’s time the U.S. and Mexico deal with the mass migration that reportedly prompted Texas to restart the enhanced inspection that hurt the border industry to the tune of at least $4 billion the last time they were implemented, in April 2023.

Salayandia and other Juarez industry officials also said the two countries must continue looking for solutions to the years-long migrant crisis that has now spilled into the heart of the region’s commerce.