Coyote Logistics opens up office in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

Chicago-based transportation management services provider Coyote Logistics, a subsidiary of transportation and logistics bellwether, UPS, said this week it has opened up a new office in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.

Company officials said that with this office, the company will be able to better assist Latin America-based customers, while continuing to provide shippers with truckload, less-than-truckload, intermodal brokerage, and transportation management services.

“The Guadalajara office is a smart expansion for Coyote and our customers,” Coyote President Jonathan Sisler said in a statement. “We have been arranging the movement of freight into, out of and within Mexico for years, but this expansion allows us to further develop the intra-Mexico business and execute a broader, more complex array of services to existing and new customers both in Mexico and North America.”

A Coyote spokeswoman told LM that the company has been working on this expansion for more than a year, with the idea behind it being to expand service offerings for its existing North American customers but to also gain scale within Mexico as well.

As for the biggest benefits of this expansion for shippers, the spokeswoman said the company can execute a broader, more complex array of services to existing and new customers in Mexico and North America.

Prior to the launch of this new office, Coyote has served Latin America through a North American team based in its Chicago headquarters that is dedicated to servicing customers with cross-border needs. The new office is currently staffed with around 30 employees, with that number expected to grow over time, the spokeswoman said.

The introduction of this office comes at a time when there is a fair amount of talk regarding the fate of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and if it will be rewritten. Regardless of what eventually happens on that front, the spokeswoman said Coyote and parent company UPS will be prepared.

“UPS is the largest customs broker in the shipping industry,” she said. “Our role is to understand the regulatory requirements for cross-border shipments and help our customers reduce complexity and ensure compliance.  We have experience working under multilateral agreements, like NAFTA, and bi-lateral agreements in every region.  Irrespective of any future changes in the trade relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, UPS and Coyote will help our customers smoothly and efficiently manage trade flows across our borders.”

Coyote officials said that when moving freight across borders, shippers have experienced difficulties with poor visibility and inadequate communication from third-party partners. And they are able to help shippers manage these challenges through things like:

• simplifying cross-border shipping with its suite of best-in-class, in-house technology products;
• cutting edge customer and carrier mobile apps that provide near real-time visibility of shipments, especially at the border where many delays can occur;
• practicing proactive communication with all parties involved when issues do arise through advanced analytics and configurable KPI reporting are provided to shippers and carriers which provide insight into trends, enabling parties to identify and remediate costly mistakes; and
• a partial or fully outsourced supply chain management program, Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM), and a suite of technology solutions in the region giving shippers greater control over their evolving supply chains

Citing U.S. Department of State data, Coyote said that on a daily basis the United States and Mexico exchange around $1.4 billion in commercial trade, and, according to Boston Consulting Group consumer spending in Mexico has increased over the last five years, with market opportunities in Mexico projected to top $325 billion by 2018.

Coyote also added that a fair amount of freight in the U.S.-Mexico trade lane heads north from Mexico into the U.S., and that Coyote is able to offer efficient capacity through its dense carrier network “by splitting volume among multiple carriers with diverse network needs,” and adding that “[s]hippers are positioning themselves to capitalize on Mexico’s growth. A favorable cost of goods produced, proximity to North American consumer markets, and rising labor costs in China have all prompted many U.S. companies to move a portion of their supply chains from Asia to Mexico.”