The news
In July 2026, a truck entering any of Mexico's four main ports took an average of 11 hours and 50 minutes to get out. In June it took 6 hours and 33 minutes. That is an 80.4% increase in a single month, and it breaks the recovery that had been building since May.
The figures come from the ITPAP (the Spanish acronym for Average Truck Times at Ports index), produced by T21 Business Intelligence and published on August 31, 2026. July's reading is based on 2,327 truck movements.
Port by port
| Port | June 2026 | July 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manzanillo | 5:34 | 12:50 | +7 h 16 min |
| Lázaro Cárdenas | 8:28 | 11:58 | +3 h 30 min |
| Altamira | 5:19 | 9:36 | +4 h 16 min |
| Veracruz | 6:15 | 7:13 | +57 min |
Manzanillo deteriorated the most: it more than doubled its time and ended up the slowest of the four. That matters especially if your goods come from Asia and your operation sits in western Mexico, because Manzanillo is the natural gateway toward Guadalajara and the Bajío region.
The number behind the number
The ITPAP breaks down where that time goes. In July:
- Customs: 5 hours 45 minutes — 48.6% of the total
- Waiting: 3 hours 31 minutes — 29.7%
- Handling: 2 hours 34 minutes — 21.7%
Nearly half the time is not loading or unloading: it is paperwork. And that changes the practical conclusion. A port does not get unblocked by buying more cranes, and an operation does not fix this by hiring a faster carrier.
T21 estimates the combined cost of these inefficiencies at around 44.4 million pesos per day across the four ports, and sums it up this way: "Port inefficiencies can pass directly into the cost structure of trucking".
What this number measures — and what it doesn't
It is worth being precise, because it is easy to read too much into it:
What it measures: the time a truck spends inside the port facility, from entry to exit.
What it does NOT measure: ocean transit, the days a container sits in the yard before a truck arrives, or the full customs clearance process for your goods. Your container can sit in Manzanillo for two weeks and none of that shows up in these 12 hours and 50 minutes.
Put differently: it is a thermometer for the port's operational friction, not the clock on your full import. Use it as a trend signal, not as an estimate of your delivery time.
What to do about it
Let us be blunt about one thing: no logistics operator speeds up a customs office. Anyone promising that your container will clear Manzanillo faster because you hired them is selling something they do not control.
What planning does change:
- Move the buffer, not the paperwork. If your replenishment assumed goods left the port in one day and it now takes two, the adjustment belongs in your safety stock, not in pressuring the carrier.
- Separate the arrival date from the sellable date. They are two different dates, and in July they drifted further apart. If your store publishes availability based on the first one, you will sell inventory that is still sitting in a yard.
- Prepare goods so they don't wait twice. Imported goods that also need labeling, repacking or inspection can have that work done while the rest of the operation moves, instead of stacking one wait behind another.
- Check whether the port is negotiable. It is not always, but when it is, the gap between Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas in July was nearly an hour per truck — and in other months it has run the other way. That is a conversation with your customs broker, not a permanent decision.
Frequently asked questions
Does this mean my import will be delayed? Not necessarily. The index measures truck dwell time inside the port, which is one slice of the process. A sustained increase is a congestion signal, and it is better treated as a schedule risk than as a confirmed delay.
Why does customs take almost half the time? Because clearance concentrates the document review and, when it applies, the physical inspection of the goods. It is the step with the most variability in the entire port chain.
Is July always bad? There is no clean seasonality that explains it: May and June of 2026 were improving, and July reversed that. That is why the index is tracked month to month rather than assumed to follow a pattern.
Can a 3PL get my container out faster? No. Clearance is handled by the customs broker, and dwell times are set by the port. What a logistics operator can do is receive the goods the moment they are released, process them the same day, and keep a port delay from turning into a warehouse delay as well.
If your inventory comes in through Manzanillo and you want the part you do control — receiving, labeling and getting to sellable — to stop compounding the part you don't, here is how our import services in Mexico work.