Why Uber Freight says it’s scouting around the Rio Grande Valley now

Uber Freight, which began as a trucking brokerage about a decade ago, is bullish on its potential as a cross-border customs, warehousing, and logistics business along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. 

And it’s looking to expand in the Rio Grande Valley – that could mean recruiting more truck drivers, manufacturing-sector customers, or warehouse leasing for logistics, an Uber Freight executive told the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal in a recent news interview. 

“What you can expect from us is continued investment and growth across the border, [from McAllen to] Brownsville included, but Laredo will continue to be a big location for us, Tijuana is another big location,” Zeid Houssami, senior vice president of global sales at Uber Freight, told the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal. “Those markets tend to require less warehousing, and most of that cargo that moves through those transit points moves right through. Sometimes, shippers require trailer yards where you can drop trailers, then pull them.” 

Uber Freight has several warehouses between McAllen and Brownsville; it could start leasing as part of its portfolio, but it’s not ready to pull the trigger on those, yet. Instead, most of its operations, including eight warehouse leases totalling 1.5 million square feet, are in Laredo. 

One major headwind has been the price of diesel, which has nearly doubled over the past year. 

In Laredo, it was $2.88 a gallon in mid-June, but now it’s closer to $4.50 a gallon. There’s a similar trend in the Brownsville metro, which was up from $2.89 last year to $4.66 this year. The McAllen metro diesel price jumped from $2.83 to $4.63 over the year. 

“Anytime fuel goes up, being in the middle creates both sell-side pressure from the shipper and then also buy-side pressure. We also face a ton of pricing pressure from our customers. So it definitely has an impact and some of it gets passed through to the shipper community and some gets absorbed by companies like Uber Freight and some gets absorbed by the truckers as well,” Houssami said. 

In 2021, Uber acquired Frisco, Texas-based Transplace, a trucking logistics brokerage. 

By 2024, Uber had reached $750 million in freight under management across Mexico. 

“We acquired a very robust cross-border business. So it really put us on the map across the border [especially] in Laredo,” he said. “We are also a really strong U.S. customs broker. We’re the third largest Mexican customs broker in the country.” 

The company sees itself as a full-service option for manufacturers across Mexico, especially those that have ramped up operations as part of a nearshoring strategy over the past decade, since it’s invested in operations in the country’s interior and along the border, as well as in the U.S. market. The company typically works with the largest manufacturers in the chemicals, automotive, food and beverage, and consumer goods sectors. 

In Monterrey, in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, across three facilities, the company employs about 300 workers, with many more in Mexico City and other satellite locations. The company already has more than 100,000 carriers in its network. 

The company is scouting for a larger pool of truck drivers in the Valley, especially since there’s been a driver shortage exacerbated by restrictions on B-1 visitor visas and English-proficiency requirements under the Donald Trump administration. 

The issue with the B1 driver market changes is that the program was meant for cargo manufactured in Mexico, but over the years, cargo was being dropped along the border while B1 drivers waited. 

“The privilege was abused and so a lot of the loads that were moving from the border were not originating in Mexico they were trailers that were being dropped on the border and recovered by B1 drivers, and move it to a recipient in the United States where they could take advantage of the more lucrative U.S. market andits longer haul, longer distances and so the wages were a lot higher,” he said. “Now you have to prove you’re actually moving something from Mexico into the U.S., so because of that enforcement, a lot of that capacity that was moving pretty freely from the border into the U.S. is pulled out of the market, so there are fewer drivers out there.” 

A promotional tractor-trailer for Uber Freight was recently parked in the Walmart parking lot in Hidalgo, a busy intersection near Jackson and Dicker Roads, a popular resting location for truck drivers. 

“[Our] plans in the Valley are to continue to grow. It’s a growing market, nearshoring has a huge presence because we’re seeing more Asia-based companies build a presence in Mexico,” he said. “We’re always open to bringing on carriers and really right now, with the shortage of trucking capacity due to some of the B1 [visa] and the English proficiency language requirements, we’ve seen a lot of drivers exit the market and it’s created a lot of pressure. So we’re always open to bringing on carriers and onboarding new truckers.”