Cross-Border Freight Rates in 2026: What Actually Changed at the Borders

The tariff event that drove cross-border freight in the first half of 2026 is over, and a different one starts on August 19. The 10% Section 122 import surcharge imposed by Proclamation 11012 ran from February 24 to July 24, 2026 and then lapsed on its own statutory 150-day clock. On July 20, 2026 the President signed three proclamations under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 imposing an additional 50% duty on certain Canadian motor vehicles, dairy and alcoholic beverages, effective August 19, 2026. Meanwhile the volume data does not show a crisis: in June 2026 US-Mexico truck crossings were up 1.1% year over year and US-Canada crossings up 4.8%, and CBP's commercial wait times at the major crossings are currently measured in minutes, not hours.

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, codified at 19 U.S.C. 2132, lets the President impose “a temporary import surcharge, not to exceed 15 percent ad valorem” to address balance-of-payments problems, “for a period not exceeding 150 days (unless such period is extended by Act of Congress).” Those two numbers are the whole design: a rate ceiling and a hard clock.

The rate actually imposed was 10 percent, not 15. Proclamation 11012 (91 FR 9339) states at paragraph 1 that, except as otherwise provided, “all articles imported into the United States shall be subject to a 10 percent ad valorem duty rate.” A widely repeated 15% figure — including in an earlier version of this page — confused the statutory ceiling with the rate that was used. If you priced or invoiced cross-border freight off a 15% pass-through this spring, the underlying duty was lower than that.

Paragraph 7 fixed the window precisely: effective for goods entered for consumption on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern standard time on February 24, 2026, “and shall continue in effect through 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on July 24, 2026, unless… expressly suspended, modified, or terminated on an earlier date, or unless the effective period of such surcharge is extended by an Act of the Congress.” It was not extended. It ended on July 24.

Two operational consequences. First, if a broker is still showing a Section 122 line on a rate confirmation for freight entered after July 24, that is worth a question — our guide to reading a rate confirmation covers how surcharge and accessorial lines should be presented. Second, any pricing model you built around “the surcharge expires in July” has now resolved, and the thing to plan against is the August 19 action below.

Why this matters more than the surcharge did. The Section 122 surcharge was broad, shallow and self-terminating: 10 percent on almost everything, gone in 150 days. These are the opposite — narrow, deep and open-ended. Proclamation 11047 states the HTSUS modifications “shall continue in effect, unless this action is expressly reduced, modified, or terminated.” There is no expiry date to plan around this time.

What we are not going to tell you. We do not have a sourced forecast of what a 50 percent duty on three Canadian commodity groups does to truckload demand on Great Lakes lanes, and we are not going to invent one. Autos, dairy and alcohol are three of the freight categories that move across Detroit, Port Huron and Buffalo, but the direction and size of the effect on tender volume is not something the Federal Register tells you. Watch it in your own tender and rejection data — our guide to reading freight market indicators covers which series move first. The broader structural story of production shifting toward Mexico is in our nearshoring analysis, and the general playbook for trading through a policy shock is in the supply chain disruption guide.

Laredo is the largest US land port by truck volume, and not narrowly: 261,224 trucks in June 2026, more than twice Detroit's 122,963. If you run Texas freight or the I-35 spine, that is the number that matters. Our Texas and South Central freight guide covers how Laredo, El Paso and the Texas Triangle connect.

The Michigan crossings reshuffled, they did not shrink. Detroit was up 34.9% year over year while Port Huron was down 19.6%. Taken together the two Michigan ports handled 195,645 trucks in June 2026 against 181,515 a year earlier, up 7.8%. CBP's wait-time feed now lists the Gordie Howe International Bridge as an operating commercial crossing at the Detroit port of entry alongside the Ambassador Bridge and the Windsor Tunnel. If your planning still assumes a single Detroit-Windsor chokepoint, it is out of date — see the Midwest freight guide and our Michigan service area page.

There is no cross-border volume collapse and no volume surge. US-Mexico crossings totalled 646,436 in June 2026 against 639,126 a year earlier, up 1.1%. US-Canada totalled 462,159 against 441,096, up 4.8%. Earlier versions of this page described a roughly 20% drop in Canada volumes and a double-digit weekly surge on Mexico lanes. Neither appears in the BTS data, and both have been removed. The most volatile individual ports were Eagle Pass, down 31.3%, and Nogales, down 12.5% — both worth knowing if you position equipment there, and neither consistent with a general border boom.

On produce specifically: Hidalgo/Pharr moved 56,074 trucks in June 2026 and Nogales 31,032. Those are total truck counts, not produce counts. BTS does not break crossings down by commodity, so we are not going to publish a “share of US produce imports” figure for either port — the earlier “80%+ through South Texas” claim on this page had no source and is gone. For commodity-level movement, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service publishes shipment data by origin and commodity; for the seasonal shape of the work, see our produce season trucking guide and the seasonal freight calendar.

The multi-hour border waits this page used to describe are not what CBP is reporting. The longest commercial delay reported anywhere in the feed at that moment — not just at the crossings listed above — was 50 minutes at the Blue Water Bridge. Laredo World Trade Bridge, at the largest US land port by truck volume, reported 10 minutes. Earlier versions of this page quoted waits of four to eight hours in several different and mutually inconsistent ranges, none of them sourced. Those are gone.

FAST helps, but the gap is smaller than the pitch. In this snapshot the FAST advantage ranged from zero minutes at Nogales Mariposa, Laredo World Trade Bridge and the Gordie Howe bridge to 38 minutes at the Blue Water Bridge. At Eagle Pass the FAST lanes were reported closed while the standard lanes ran at 45 minutes — a useful reminder that a credential is only worth what the open lane is worth on the day.

Wait time you are not paid for is detention by another name, and cross-border dwell is one of the places it hides. Our guide to getting paid for detention covers how to document and bill it.

Who files the ACE truck manifest is settled in regulation, and it is not the broker by default. 19 CFR 123.92(c)(1) provides that, except as provided in paragraph (c)(2), “the incoming truck carrier must present all required information to CBP.” Paragraph (c)(2) permits dual-party presentation: the US importer or its customs broker “may elect to present to CBP a portion of the required information that it possesses,” and where it does, “the carrier is responsible for presenting to CBP the remainder.”

The timing is in 123.92(a): CBP must receive the advance cargo information through a CBP-approved electronic data interchange system “no later than either 30 minutes or 1 hour prior to the carrier's reaching the first port of arrival in the United States, or such lesser time as authorized, based upon the CBP-approved system employed.” A broker is normally engaged for the importer's customs entry — a separate filing from your advance manifest.

Cross-border work also carries the driver-side compliance exposure that has been enforced more heavily through 2026; our coverage of English language proficiency enforcement is directly relevant if you are staffing border lanes.

The structural point survives the correction: goods that cross a land border by truck are overwhelmingly transloaded, drayed or relayed inland, and that inland leg is ordinary domestic freight requiring no FAST card, no CTPAT membership and no manifest filing. Laredo alone handled 261,224 truck crossings in June 2026 (BTS); those trailers do not all terminate in Webb County.

What we will not do is tell you what those lanes pay. An earlier version of this page listed more than fifty per-mile rate figures across a dozen lanes, sourced to nothing more specific than the names “DAT” and “FreightWaves SONAR” and, in one footnote, a link to a CBP page that publishes trade value rather than rates. Several of those figures contradicted each other — the same Laredo-to-Dallas reefer lane appeared with five different ranges on one page. All of them have been removed. Lane-level spot rates come from paywalled proprietary products; if you want them, buy them, and quote the product, lane code and pull date when you do.

Here is the number that is actually yours. The American Transportation Research Institute's 2026 operational-costs update puts the marginal cost of trucking at $2.336 per mile for 2025, or $1.854 per mile excluding fuel. Fuel is the piece that has moved: EIA put the US average on-highway diesel price at $5.257 per gallon for the week ending August 10, 2026. A truck averaging 6.5 mpg burns about $0.81 per mile at that price, which added to ATRI's ex-fuel figure gives roughly $2.66 per mile all-in. Substitute your own mpg and your own fixed costs — that is what the cost per mile calculator is for. Any border lane has to clear that number before the word “premium” means anything.

Deadhead is the real border-lane risk. Cross-border truckload flow is directionally imbalanced, which is why repositioning toward a border hub is where margin is won or lost rather than in the headline rate. Model it with the deadhead calculator and read our guide to avoiding deadhead miles. For the corridors themselves — I-35 into Laredo, I-10 into El Paso, I-94 and I-75 into the Michigan crossings — see the interstate corridor guide.

Equipment choice is a real lever; rate quotes are not. Produce-heavy crossings favour reefer, the Michigan crossings favour dry van and the El Paso corridor carries a heavier flatbed mix. Which of those is worth owning is a cost-structure question, covered in reefer versus dry van profitability. And if a policy-driven window ever does open, the way to keep the gain is to convert it into committed freight rather than to keep chasing the board — see spot market versus contract freight. Carrier capacity leaving or entering these lanes is tracked in our carrier exodus analysis.

The 2026 cross-border story that ran from February to July is closed. The 10% Section 122 surcharge did exactly what the statute said it would do and expired on July 24, 2026. What replaced it is narrower and harder: 50% duties on certain Canadian motor vehicles, dairy and alcoholic beverages under Section 338, effective August 19, 2026, with no expiry date written into them.

Underneath the policy noise, the physical border is steady. June 2026 truck volumes were up 1.1% year over year on the Mexico side and 4.8% on the Canada side. Commercial waits at the major crossings are running in minutes. The Michigan crossings have redistributed between Detroit and Port Huron rather than contracted. None of that is chaos, and a carrier making positioning decisions off a “border chaos” narrative is trading on a story that the data does not support.

What to actually do: read Annex II of the relevant July 20 proclamation if you touch Canadian autos, dairy or alcohol, and our tariffs and trucking rates analysis for the equipment-cost side; check bwt.cbp.gov before you accept a border load rather than trusting a quoted wait time; know your own cost per mile before you evaluate any lane as a premium; and follow the wider rate picture through our freight rates and markets hub.