Seguro de carga is cargo insurance in Mexico, where the system inverts U.S. assumptions: a Mexican carrier's statutory liability is capped at a token amount per ton, so the shipper or broker, not the carrier, is expected to insure the load's value.
Seguro de carga means cargo insurance, and it is the site of the single most expensive misconception in cross-border freight. In the U.S., brokers assume the motor carrier's cargo policy covers loss and damage up to a meaningful limit. In Mexico, the law works differently: under the federal trucking statute, a carrier's default liability is capped at a formula amount per ton that typically represents a small fraction of the freight's real value, unless the shipper declares value and pays for full coverage. The Mexican carrier is legally in the right when a claim pays out almost nothing; the system expects the cargo owner to carry its own all-risk policy.
Never move the Mexican leg of a load assuming U.S.-style recovery. The questions to resolve before dispatch, and to document in the rate confirmation: who insures the cargo's full value on the Mexican leg, under whose all-risk policy, with what security warranties (many policies require secured overnight parking or escorts for certain commodities and corridors)? Asking a Mexican carrier for a U.S.-style certificate of insurance and stopping there is the classic false comfort: the paper exists, and it does not say what a U.S. broker thinks it says. Shippers with global cargo programs usually extend them to Mexico easily; the failure mode is the load nobody extended. For the full explanation of the inverted model, see the Mexico 101 Guide.
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