B-1 capacity after the crackdown: what changed, and why the freight still moves

Brokers keep asking us a version of the same question: If enforcement has pulled this many Mexican drivers off the road, why is the freight still moving? Both halves are true at once, and the space between them is where this year's pricing lives.

Before we get started, let’s review the facts

• Enforcement against cabotage tightened sharply, and it is now caught at the crossing rather than months later in a file.
• Roughly 20,000 Mexican driver visas were revoked between April 2025 and April 2026, about 3,200 of them for cabotage since January; as reported by CANACAR. Separately, English-proficiency checks have put more than 7,000 drivers out of service.
• It landed on a pool that was already short. CANACAR estimates Mexico is missing roughly 96,000 drivers, with nearly 30% of those still working over 55.
• The freight did not go anywhere, because it cannot. The plants are in Mexico, and Mexico has been the top U.S. trading partner three years running, and it’s only increasing.
• And it still moves on B-1 capacity, because B-1 capacity is what the cross border carrier-base is made of. What changed is which operators are still eligible to provide it.

What is a B-1 Driver?

A B-1 driver is a Mexican national admitted to the United States on a B-1 business visitor visa to move international freight. They are allowed to move freight that crosses the border in either direction, but they are not allowed to move freight between two domestic U.S. points. That is cabotage, and it has always been illegal.

It is worth being blunt about the stakes, because the public conversation often is not. B-1 drivers are not a loophole in cross border trucking. They are the engine of it. Take them out, and you do not have a cross border market, you have a parking lot in Laredo, and another one across the border in Nuevo Laredo with nothing to bridge them.

Our own carrier network makes the point better than an argument does. Among the carriers we have onboarded in Laredo, more than two-thirds run majority B-1 fleets, and more than 40% run entirely B-1 (zero CDL drivers on staff). Only about 8% run an exclusively CDL fleet. That is not a quirk of one network, that is what the carrier base moving this freight actually looks like.

What changed

The rule didn't change. What did change is the enforcement, and three factors stand out the most.

First, violations are now caught at the crossing. Agencies began sharing driver and inspection records, so a cabotage pattern that used to sit in a roadside file, now surfaces at the border where the visa is. Simply, violations are reported in real time at the gate, rather than a paperwork consequence months later.

Second, the consequence moved to the visa. Drivers flagged for cabotage have lost their B-1s, most commonly at the border. Border business groups also report a multi-year review of electronic logging and inspection history, though no agency has published a look-back rule, and CBP has not published enforcement totals.

Third, a second front opened. English Language Proficiency (ELP) violations became an out-of-service offense effective in June 2025, per the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (with border commercial zones partially exempted). On its own, it’s a modest rule. Stacked on visa exposure, it narrowed the eligible pool again.

Alongside all of it, the public count of Mexican carriers holding U.S. border-zone operating authority is trending downward: FMCSA counted 5,232 as of May 15, 2026, against 5,633 at the end of 2024.

The uncomfortable truth

A small number of carriers had been knowingly running B-1 drivers on purely domestic U.S. loads. That is cabotage, and it has always been illegal. But enforcement was too loose for too long, so operators were able to exploit it and get away with building part of their business model on it. And in doing so, they undercut every carrier that played by the rules.

That era is ending, and the industry is better for it. The driver still exists, he just simply cannot legally pull the freight that he was illegally pulling a year ago. The carriers that knowingly dispatched him are losing an advantage they should never have had in the first place.

This is worth saying plainly because the alternative framing “that capacity mysteriously evaporated” lets everyone off the hook. It did not evaporate. This is an enforcement story, and it has a name, an agency, and a paper trail.

How this affects your rates

Capacity leaving a market shows up in price before it shows up in a headline. On Cargado's published index (the same figures a rate lookup returns in the product) the northbound market has risen every week since late January, closing July at $3.36 a mile, up 18.5% on the same week a year earlier. Twenty-six consecutive weeks without a down week is not a seasonal wobble.

The more revealing number is the imbalance. The northbound-to-southbound gap is $1.16 a mile, against 90 cents a year ago… that’s 29% wider in twelve months. That spread is a carrier telling you they cannot find a paying load home, so they are pricing the empty miles into your headhaul.

You pay for that deadhead whether you booked it or not.

Behavior changed too. When capacity is scarce, carriers stop taking whatever is posted and start getting more selective. A load priced properly, described thoroughly, and posted with real lead-time gets answered. A vague load at a good rate often does not.

So, why does the freight still move?

Three reasons, and none of them are that the problem was overstated.

The demand has nowhere else to go. Mexico has been the top U.S. trading partner for three consecutive years, and in 2025 became the largest destination for U.S. exports for the first time, per U.S. Census Bureau trade data. The manufacturing plants nearshoring built are in Monterrey, Saltillo, Querétaro, Guadalajara and the Bajío. Production does not relocate because visas got harder, it ships.

The capacity consolidated rather than vanished. Enforcement did not remove the freight. It removed the operators least equipped to stay compliant. What is left is a smaller, more credentialed pool: real authority, real insurance, and drivers whose status holds at the border. Harder to buy from, and considerably better to work with. The same enforcement that raised your rates also thinned out the operators most likely to strand your load at a bridge.

And where a through-move no longer works, the freight transloads. Hand it to a U.S. carrier in Laredo and it keeps moving legally. That is a real answer, and it is not a free one. It adds a cost and a step, and it concentrates more volume into an already busy crossing. When you see a lane that used to run straight through now quoted with a handoff, this is usually why.

What to do about it

• Reprice anything quoted before March. A number set earlier this year was built for a market that no longer exists. Even the cheapest quarter of priced lanes moved 56 cents in twelve months.
• Confirm the freight is genuinely international. This is the cleanest protection available to you. If the load crosses a border, a B-1 driver is fully authorized to move it. If it does not, no rate makes it legal.
• Vet the carrier, not the driver. Individual drivers do not appear on operating authority or insurance certificates. This is true of every carrier, not just B-1s.
• Commit southbound where you have it. That $1.16 gap is a carrier's empty-mile problem, and it is being paid for in your northbound rate. Pairing a return leg is the most direct lever you have on price.
• Build the bench before the tender. When capacity is selective, the broker with a pre-vetted carrier list (or network, like Cargado) gets answered. The one starting from scratch waits.

Frequently asked questions

Are B-1 drivers legal?

Entirely, for international freight. A B-1 driver may move a load crossing the U.S.–Mexico border in either direction. What they may not do is move domestic U.S. freight between two U.S. points, which is cabotage. The visa is not the risk, using it for the wrong kind of load is.

Should I avoid carriers that use B-1 drivers?

No, and you would be cutting yourself off from most of the cross border market for no compliance benefit. Among the carriers we have onboarded in Laredo, more than two-thirds run majority-B-1 fleets. You are booking a U.S.-authorized carrier either way. The productive question is whether the load you are tendering is international, which is entirely within your control.

Has enforcement really reduced available capacity?

The reported figures say yes, and they should be read as reported figures. CANACAR reports roughly 20,000 Mexican driver visas revoked between April 2025 and April 2026, about 3,200 of those for cabotage since January, out of some 30,000 foreign drivers it says were removed from U.S. operations. CBP has not published enforcement totals, so there is no agency number to fact-check it against.

If capacity is tighter, why has my freight still covered?

Because the carriers who remain are the ones set up to stay compliant, and there are still enough of them to move the market's freight; be it, at a higher price, with more selectivity about which loads they take, and sometimes with a transload at the border. Tight is not the same as empty.

Is this going to ease again?

Nothing in the enforcement picture suggests a reversal, and the underlying shortage predates it: CANACAR estimates Mexico is short roughly 96,000 drivers, with nearly 30% of working drivers over 55. Plan on a tighter, more credentialed carrier base as the normal condition rather than a temporary one.