A sweeping overhaul of U.S. tariff policy has structurally shattered decades of predictable global trade, forcing corporate logisticians to abandon slow ocean corridors and rapidly expand cross-border road freight as a shield against policy volatility, according to a comprehensive data analysis released by trade technology provider Infios.
The report reveals that multi-layered, stacked duties implemented in 2025 have driven corporate shippers into a permanent era of tariff-optimized supply chains. For motor carriers, this transition represents a structural tailwind: over-the-road freight share surged by 8 percentage points, capturing 32% of the total import value share.
Customs entry data from 2024 and 2025 reveals that while an initial wave of reactive panic immediately following the April 2025 policies triggered brief, unstable spikes in border traffic, a second, more resilient wave of structural adaptation solidified in late 2025 and has persisted into 2026.
Shippers are no longer relying on stopgap measures; they are actively re-engineering networks around nearshoring, shorter supply chains, and predictable border crossings—cementing trucking’s role as the backbone of tariff-resistant trade lanes.
“What we’re seeing isn’t just a shift in sourcing or supplier mix. It’s a fundamental change in how trade is executed,” said Don Mabry, senior vice president of global trade solutions at Infios. “Tariffs have introduced a level of volatility that companies can no longer manage with periodic adjustments or manual processes."
Persistent growth in truck freight mirrors the structural relocation of manufacturing networks to Mexico and Canada. In the latter half of last year, trade share originating from Mexico stabilized at a permanent 2.0 percentage point gain, while Canada locked in a 0.4 percentage point increase. Conversely, slow-moving ocean freight bore the brunt of the policy risk, contracting by 10 to 12 percentage points. Logisticians discovered that the financial math on long ocean transits changed when every week spent at sea represented another week of unmanageable tariff uncertainty, driving high-value cargo directly onto North American roadways.
For motor carriers operating in cross-border lanes, however, the report highlights a hidden operational pressure: rising regulatory scrutiny.
The average Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) sequence count per customs entry nearly doubled from six to 11.6 due to layered tariff complexity. More critically for regional freight flows, the U.S. terminated the informal entry exemption for low-value goods moving from Canada and Mexico. Overnight, low-value truck shipments that previously required zero customs paperwork were fully formalized, sending Canadian lowest-bracket entries alone skyrocketing by 79% from 34,000 to 61,000 filings.
Too, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has sharply increased audit activity targeting rules-of-origin compliance under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Because many cross-border shipments sit dangerously close to qualification thresholds, the report warns that carriers and their customers face exposure to retroactive duty debts if supplier documentation is lacking.
To navigate these administrative bottlenecks and liquidity strains, shippers are increasingly integrating customs-authorized bonded warehouses directly into their truck routing networks. Mainstream usage of bonded entries jumped from 10% in 2024 to 16% in 2025, and it continues to climb. Shippers are using these staging facilities to defer large duty outlays, pulling inventory into U.S. domestic commerce via regional truck carriers only as fast as actual sales velocity demands.
The report concludes that the future of global trade execution belongs to flexible, intelligent logistics networks. Motor carriers that position themselves not just as simple transportation providers, but as strategically integrated components of an automated cross-border compliance infrastructure, stand to capture the definitive share of the reshaped North American shipping market.
