What metals and building-materials freight should cost across the Mexico border

The metals and building-materials market on Cargado

Metals and building materials · 12 months to Oct. 27, 2026 · Cargado postings

About 45% of metals and building-materials postings drew at least one carrier bid in the year, against 42% for all freight, from hundreds of carriers. Source: Cargado postings, Oct. 28, 2025 to Oct. 27, 2026, grouped by commodity description. Shares are of postings, not of revenue or tonnage.

How metals and building-materials shippers use Cargado

Shippers do not post loads on Cargado; brokers post them and vetted carriers bid. What a shipper gets is the rate data those bids produce: a low, mid and high band for a lane, refreshed weekly, with 12 weeks of history, in USD, MXN or CAD, wherever enough carriers have bid recently. A thin lane gets a lower confidence label or is priced from a wider area, and a lane with too few recent bids shows no rate. Dry van, reefer and flatbed are priced separately, so a flatbed lane and a dry van lane each carry their own band; step deck and Conestoga are trailers a broker names on a posting, not separate bands.

Where metals and building-materials freight concentrates

Monterrey and the rest of Nuevo León are the largest Mexican market at both ends of this freight on Cargado: the top origin of metals and building-materials postings in the year and, after the Laredo border yards, the top destination. Taken as one region, the Bajío (Guanajuato, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí) receives more of these postings than Nuevo León and ships nearly as many; Coahuila is a steady destination for southbound steel but a small origin. North of the border the freight lands in Texas, with Houston the largest U.S. market beyond the border yards and Kentucky behind it; Houston and Corpus Christi are the leading U.S. origins. Tijuana and the Otay Mesa crossing carry a smaller West Coast flow. Laredo shows up as both an origin and a destination, the mark of loads that break at the border yards rather than running through on one trailer.

How metals and building materials move

• Coils. Skidded or eye-to-the-sky, chained and sometimes on coil racks. In the U.S., metal coils weighing 5,000 lb or more, alone or together, fall under their own securement rule, 49 CFR 393.120, and coil-qualified carriers are a narrower pool than flatbed carriers, which shows in lead time and in the bid.
• Plate, tubing, rebar and structural shapes. Ride flatbeds with chains, binders and edge protection, tarped when the product must stay dry. Coated and finished metal increasingly moves under Conestoga rolling tarps, which protect it without hand-tarping.
• Dry van for about half of it. About half of metals and building-materials postings are dry van. Coils, tubing and palletized goods ride in vans when the product needs a closed trailer or the receiver unloads from a dock, alongside wire, fixtures, hardware and tile.
• The weight gap at the border. Mexico allows a five-axle tractor-trailer about 102,500 lb gross on its main highways; the U.S. Interstate cap is 80,000 lb. A coil load built to Mexican limits is split into two trucks, transloaded at a border yard, or run on a designated overweight corridor, and each option costs money or a day. Some freight runs through-trailer; the rest breaks at Laredo or another border yard, and the choice changes the rate and the handling.

What to ask your carrier or broker

Open-deck lanes reward specificity, and the questions below are where the rate and the service level get decided.

• Which trailer is on the posting? Flatbed is the common open-deck trailer at a Mexican plant; step decks and Conestogas run in the U.S. and Canada, and loads touching Mexico for them are posted and bid on. The trailer named decides which carriers bid. For pricing, Market Rates covers dry van, reefer and flatbed, so a step deck or Conestoga move is priced against the flatbed band; say so in the RFP.
• Is the securement on the posting? Open-deck postings on Cargado list straps, chains, tarps and blocking and bracing, and on a U.S. or Canada posting coil racks and edge protectors. Ask your broker to put the product, the piece count, the weight per piece and the tarp requirement on the posting; that is what open-deck carriers price.
• Does the weight cross? Ask whether the load is built to the U.S. 80,000 lb limit or will be split or transloaded at the border, and who pays for the yard.
• Cargo insurance and C-TPAT. On Cargado, a broker can require C-TPAT and set a minimum cargo insurance on the posting. Ask whether yours does, and whether the minimum matches the value of the steel.
• Who can see your freight? A broker can limit a posting's bidders to carriers it has already onboarded, and a load that stays inside Mexico goes to Mexican carriers only. If you expect either, ask for it.

New to the market? The Mexico 101 guides cover crossings, documents and carrier vetting, the lanes pages show the corridors this freight runs, and open-deck coverage explains how flatbed, step deck and Conestoga loads are posted.

On the Cargado network

Industry guides

Where this freight ships from, what the border adds to its cost, and how carrier bids moved out of its markets:

• Why does more steel now move south into Mexico than north?
• Furniture and building materials from Mexico, beyond the carrier's rate
• Mexico-U.S. tariffs and trade rules

More questions

What equipment moves metals across the border?

About half dry van and 44% open deck (flatbed or step deck) on Cargado in the last 12 months, against 11% open deck for all freight. Coils, plate, tubing and rebar ride open deck with chains, tarps and sometimes coil racks, though coils and tubing also move in vans; wire, fixtures, hardware and tile are usually dry van. Make sure your broker names the trailer on the posting so the right carriers bid, and price a flatbed lane on its own Market Rates band.

What does a benchmark cost?

Nothing. Share a list of your Mexico or Canada lanes or recent loads and we price them against Market Rates and show where you sit, with no commitment. Ongoing Market Rates access is a subscription, direct or through partners such as GoodShip.