CEVA expands U.S.-Mexico transborder services

Global third-party logistics (3PL) services provider CEVA Logistics said last week that it has rolled out two new services for its United States-Mexico Transborder offerings.

Company officials said that with more than $500 billion in goods and services exchanged between the two countries in 2012, Mexico is one of the top trading partners for the U.S., with more than 11,000 truck and 1,200 rail car border crossings occurring on a daily basis.

The new services are Mexico Direct, which offers faster customs clearance for Mexico importers, and a new intermodal service. These two offerings join CEVA’s existing U.S.-Mexico services, which include air and expedited Transborder offerings, including less-than-truckload, and full truckload, according to CEVA.

With the new Mexico Direct service, CEVA said it is offering shippers a combination of its ground LTL network on the US side together with in-bond trucking on the Mexico side.  It said that through this process cargo is moved from any CEVA station up to the company’s Los Angeles or Dallas/Fort Worth consolidation hub, where it is then loaded onto dedicated in-bond full trucks and sent directly to selected Mexican airports, avoiding any handling or delays at the border.  At this point, cargo is delivered at the Mexican airport, as it if was flown, and ready for local customs clearance by the importer of record.

CEVA said this represents a significant change from the previous process in which most of the Transborder shipments coming from the U.S. into Mexico were custom cleared at the border, which meant that every Mexican importer of record, no matter where its corporate offices or production facilities were located, had to set up and maintain a customs broker at the border, resulting in additional costs and lack of oversight.

“Many customers have been facing delays at the border with customs clearance and border crossing for LTL cargo,” said Boris Franchomme, SVP of Mexico & Central America for CEVA, in an interview. “This is why CEVA has developed a new option which allows importers to ‘bypass’ the border and bring their cargo in transit to the closest airport of destination and custom clear the merchandise as if it had been flown into Mexico.” 

With its new U.S.-Mexico rail intermodal service, CEVA said there have been significant investments in recent years to improve Mexico’s rail infrastructure, which has seen double-digit growth in international volumes between the U.S.-Mexico. CEVA said that through its intermodal marketing customers it can now offer its customers complete door-to-door services with lower freight rates.

Franchomme explained that the benefits of these service additions for customers include shorter door-to-door transit times, no handling / loading / unloading at the border, faster customs clearance process at the airport of destination, immediate last mile delivery, which are all under CEVA’s control and tracking. And he added that these services are geared towards importers of LTL cargo located in the metropolitan areas of Monterrey, Mexico City and Guadalajara.

“Our aim is to offer our customers flexible transportation options between the U.S. and Mexico, including rail and intermodal services, traditional FTL and LTL trucking with customs clearance at the border, and now ‘Mexico Direct,’ our service for southbound LTL cargo with customs clearance at Mexican airports of destination,” he said. “With those solutions, CEVA is shaping the future of transborder transportation.”