Transport Union Threatens to Block Lázaro Cárdenas and Coatzacoalcos Ports Over Unpaid Debts
The trucks were already lined up when the union leader made the call. Two ports, one road, zero movement. The question was not whether they could shut it down, but how long the government would let them.
The driver sat in his cab at the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, engine off because he could not afford diesel. Behind him, rows of fertilizer bags sat waiting to be moved. Ahead, a payment that was months overdue. He was one of hundreds of small Mexican trucking operators being crushed by unpaid government debts, and his union had just drawn a line.
The Confederación Nacional de Transportistas Mexicanos (Conatram) in Michoacán has threatened to block the ports of Lázaro Cárdenas and Coatzacoalcos unless the federal government pays millions of pesos it owes to small transporters who moved fertilizer under the Fertilizantes del Bienestar program. The blockade would hit two of Mexico's most important ports: Lázaro Cárdenas on the Pacific, a critical node for container shipping and agricultural exports, and Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf of Mexico, a hub for petrochemical and fertilizer logistics.
Luis Alfonso Ochoa Sánchez, the Conatram delegate in Michoacán, said small carriers were required to meet strict capacity and safety standards to qualify for the government contract. They invested in equipment, training, insurance, and security protocols. Foreign companies moving the same loads did not have to meet the same bar.
"Hemos realizado ajustes operativos, de equipo e inversiones en unidades, personal, capacitaciones y seguridad para cumplir con las condiciones requeridas, sólo para ver que no hay igualdad de condiciones," Ochoa Sánchez said at a press conference this week.
The small trucking business owner at the heart of this story represents thousands of micro-enterprises that operate on razor-thin margins. These are owner-operators who live payment to payment. A single delayed invoice can cascade: unpaid fuel bills, missed loan payments, late wages for drivers whose families depend on weekly income. In an industry where diesel alone can consume 40% of revenue, months of unpaid invoices does not create a cash flow problem. It creates insolvency.
Conatram Michoacán has sent formal demands to President Claudia Sheinbaum, the Secretariat of Agriculture, and the Secretariat of Public Administration. The union wants three things: a full audit of Fertilizantes del Bienestar contracts, an investigation into how Pemex assigned the logistics work, and an immediate working group between Pemex management and the affected carriers.
The union warned that if the government does not act, the organization's base is ready to shut down access roads and port facilities at both locations.
"Si deciden ignorarnos, cargarán con una deuda política, económica y moral, porque no nos vamos a quedar inmóviles," the union said in its warning. "Las organizaciones nos empujan a acciones como el cierre de carreteras y accesos en el Puerto de Lázaro Cárdenas, particularmente en las plantas de fertilizantes de aquí y de Coatzacoalcos."
The Fertilizantes del Bienestar program was launched by the previous administration to distribute free fertilizer to small farmers, a cornerstone of the government's food sovereignty agenda. The program moved tons of product through state-owned Agroindustrias del Balsas facilities at both ports. But the logistics chain depended heavily on private carriers, many of them small Mexican trucking companies that took on the work in good faith.
Union leaders said the discrepancies go beyond late payments. Foreign companies appear to have been given preferential volume allocation and significantly less stringent oversight, while Mexican micro-carriers were required to document every operational detail to the letter.
"For them to demand paperwork, technical capacity, financial solvency from us, and then let foreign operators move the same loads without the same controls, that is not competition. That is discrimination," Ochoa Sánchez said.
The stakes are serious. If the blockade goes forward, it would disrupt container shipping, agricultural exports, and industrial supply chains that depend on both ports. Lázaro Cárdenas handled over 1.5 million TEUs in 2024 and is a strategic alternative to overcrowded Pacific ports farther north. Coatzacoalcos serves the Pemex refinery network and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec trade corridor.
For the small operators, the threat is existential. They invested everything they had to meet the government's requirements, betting that contracts would be honored and families fed. Now they sit in idled trucks at the port gates, staring at the ocean, waiting for a government that has their work but not their payment.
"Nosotros movemos la economía nacional," the union said. "No pedimos privilegios, exigimos atención, piso parejo, transparencia y cumplimiento de contratos."