From billion-dollar acquisitions to EV fleet deployments and distribution network expansions, Canada is seeing a surge of logistics investment tied to its role in North American supply chains and cross-border trade. 

Nippon Express targets Canadian 3PL to expand North America footprint

Japan-based Nippon Express Holdings is moving to significantly scale its North American logistics presence through the planned acquisition of Canada’s Metro Supply Chain Group, according to a news release.

The deal, valued at up to $1.6 billion, would give Nippon Express a stronger foothold across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., while expanding its contract logistics capabilities.

Metro Supply Chain Group is a third-party logistics provider offering end-to-end solutions for brands in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Metro Supply Chain services a broad range of industries, including consumer goods, automotive, manufacturing and healthcare.

Nippon officials said the acquisition aligns with its long-term strategy to build a global logistics platform, with Canada serving as a key gateway market for cross-border freight flows and customer expansion.

The transaction is expected to close by December.

Tokyo-based Nippon Express is a global logistics services company with 739 worldwide locations and more than 33,000 employees.

Coke Canada accelerates electric fleet rollout

Coca-Cola Canada Bottling is expanding its electric trucking fleet, adding seven Volvo VNR Electric trucks in Quebec and British Columbia.

The additions bring the company’s national electric fleet to nearly 40 vehicles, supporting regional delivery routes where predictable operations align with EV capabilities, according to a news release.

The trucks can travel up to 273-miles per charge and are being deployed on high-frequency distribution routes, supported by new charging infrastructure in both provinces.

The Volvo VNR Electric truck is a Class 8 electric vehicle, typically priced around $400,000–$420,000+ each.

Toyota Canada investing $300M in distribution, HQ expansion

Toyota Canada plans to invest more than $300 million to build three new facilities, including two Western Canada parts distribution centers and a new head office in Ontario.

The new distribution facilities include the 210,000 operating square feet British Columbia Parts Distribution Centre in Richmond, British Columbia, and the 220,000 Alberta Parts Distribution Centre in Calgary, Alberta.

The distribution centers are designed to improve service levels for dealerships across Western Canada and enhance access to major transportation corridors.

Both facilities are scheduled to begin operations in 2028.

Registrar Corp expands cross-border compliance services into Canada

U.S.-based Registrar Corp. is strengthening its regulatory footprint in Canada through the acquisition of consulting firm Dell Tech.

The move is aimed at helping companies navigate Health Canada requirements and market access rules, which remain a major barrier for cross-border trade in regulated industries such as food, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

“Welcoming TechniCAL into the Registrar Corp family enables us to deliver unmatched regulatory and safety support for companies producing shelf-stable packaged foods and beverages,” Raj Shah, CEO of Registrar Corp., said in a news release.

As tariffs, compliance rules and nearshoring accelerate supplier shifts, regulatory friction — not just transportation — is emerging as a key bottleneck in cross-border supply chains.

Dell Tech’s expertise in Health Canada regulations, product licensing and safety testing will be integrated into Registrar Corp’s broader compliance platform, which already serves more than 35,000 clients across 180 countries.

Evaaro builds cross-border keg logistics platform

Private equity-backed Evaaro is expanding into North America through the acquisition of Keg Logistics (U.S.) and North Keg (Canada), according to a news release.

The deal creates a multi-region keg pooling and logistics platform spanning the U.K., EU, U.S. and Canada, with a customer base of nearly 3,000 brewers globally.

The global keg logistics market is estimated at $1.9 billion to $3.2 billion, with pooling services accounting for roughly $1.1 billion.

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Australia Post and eBay have teamed up to make it easier for Australians to sell online, launching a new ‘Print in Store’ capability that allows eBay sellers to print shipping labels at participating post offices using a QR code, at no additional cost.

Designed to make sending simpler, faster and more convenient, the new capability gives sellers a free and flexible way to create and print labels without the need for a home printer and tender parcels in the same visit. 

Sellers can now generate a QR code in the eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) platform for in-store scanning and printing.

The new offering supports small merchants by delivering a more cost-effective way to do business and removing friction from the sending process, said Australia Post general manager enterprise & government, Chelsea O’Reilly in a news release.

“By eliminating the need for a home printer, we’re making it easier for more Australians to start selling online and posting their items to buyers anywhere in Australia,” added Marie Griffiths, eBay Australia head of marketplace.

The new print-in-store capability follows the successful introduction of an extra small parcel option for items under 250 grams, trialled in collaboration with eBay, to give sellers more choice and help small businesses cut shipping costs. Australia Post also introduced parcel-only post offices last year.

In the United States, parcel logistics operators and retailers like FedEx, Happy Returns and Amazon offer no-label returns to facilitate the returns process for consumers.

Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) activated the first phase of the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) tool on Monday.

Integrated into the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Secure Data Portal, the CAPE system is designed to streamline the massive undertaking of refunding billions in duties and interest to the trade community.

The launch of CAPE follows a landmark Supreme Court decision in February that invalidated “Liberation Day” tariffs previously imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). 

The ruling determined that the law did not authorize such duties, paving the way for importers to reclaim $166 billion.

By utilizing CAPE, CBP aims to avoid the estimated 4.4 million man-hours required for manual processing. Key features of the new system include:

• Consolidated Processing: Refunds are processed collectively rather than on a traditional entry-by-entry basis.
• Electronic Filing: Importers and authorized customs brokers can now file CAPE Declarations directly through their ACE Portal accounts.
• Included Interest: The system is designed to consolidate refunds of IEEPA duties including applicable interest.

The initial rollout is expected to handle roughly $127 billion in refunds, covering approximately 82% of eligible entries for over 56,000 registered importers. For this first phase, eligibility is limited to certain unliquidated entries and entries within 80 days of liquidation.

While Phase 1 focuses on automated electronic payments, more complex claims—including a $2.9 billion subset of certain tariffs—will be addressed in later updates or through manual processing.

Despite the system’s launch, experts warn of potential hurdles. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has noted that tariffs could potentially return as early as July under different authorities. 

Additionally, historical precedents suggest that while the electronic system is a significant step forward, the full payout of such a massive sum could stretch beyond current projections due to ongoing legal and political uncertainties.

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WASHINGTON — U.S. shipping regulators are throwing gas against carriers looking to cover rapidly increasing fuel costs.

The Federal Maritime Commission has again rejected a request by Maersk to waive the 30-day waiting period for implementing emergency fuel surcharges. 

It was the third time since the start of the Iran war that the Danish carrier (OTYC: AMKBY) has seen its request for special permission turned down by the FMC.

The world’s second-largest container carrier failed to show good cause under statutory requirements for the request, the FMC stated in a letter posted to its website April 17.

Maersk in its April filing said that the Iran war and subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz have sharply increased the price of bunker fuel. It cited data that showed the price of Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil (VLSFO) at global top 20 ports soared from $509 per metric ton on Feb. 6 to $929 per ton on March 9. 

FMC Chair Laura DiBella earlier wrote that the liner had failed to disclose specific details in making its business case for a speeded-up process.

Maersk likely was reluctant to disclose too much information as the fuel chaos came just as it and other ocean carriers were negotiating annual contracts with their biggest customers.

In an interview with FreightWaves at FMC headquarters, DiBella said that while she was empathetic to carriers’ needs to absorb costs, she said shippers are facing the same concerns. She also said that liners should have been better prepared.

“It’s not that this started out of nowhere. There was an awareness that this was coming and that there was, potentially, a conflict arising,” DiBella said “There were a lot of threats around [President Donald] Trump wanting to take action should negotiations go sideways. I think at least for the initial 30-day window, that there was some inherent risk built-in.”

Maersk later amended its latest filing, blaming an oversight by its service center for not publishing the April 9 effective date, and resetting it to April 17.

FreightWaves has reached out to Maersk for comment.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Green light for Strait of Hormuz shipping could take six months after war’s end

Average March volume was actually good news for the Port of Los Angeles 

This U.S. state just banned public funding for port automation

For $3 billion, ocean line expands fleet by 250,000 TEUs

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Borderlands Mexico is a weekly rundown of developments in the world of United States-Mexico cross-border trucking and trade. This week in Borderlands: Truck exports to U.S. fall in March; Mexico’s Port of Manzanillo posts record Q1 container volumes; and GM, SAIC weigh Mexico production amid tariff shifts.

Truck exports to U.S. fall in March

Mexico’s heavy-duty truck sector showed continued weakness in March, with production and exports falling year over year despite signs of a sequential recovery, as U.S. demand remains the dominant driver of cross-border shipments.

Mexico produced 12,617 heavy-duty trucks in the month, a 6.6% decline compared to March 2025, according to data from the country’s statistics agency INEGI.

Exports totaled 10,625 units, down 5.9% year over year, underscoring softer freight equipment demand across North America.

Industry leaders pointed to a mix of structural and cyclical pressures impacting production and exports, including:

• Weak freight demand and cautious fleet investment
• Elevated inventories across North American carriers
• Competition from used truck imports into Mexico

Guillermo Rosales, president of Mexican Association of Automotive Distributors (AMDA), said the sector is still recovering from a sharp downturn that began in 2025.

“The industry is facing a pronounced contraction in production, exports and domestic sales,” Rosales said during a news conference on Monday.

He added that policy measures aimed at fleet renewal and limiting used truck imports could help support production and export demand later in 2026.

Despite the declines, industry officials pointed to a month-over-month rebound in both production and exports as a potential early signal of stabilization following a weak start to 2026.

U.S. remains dominant export market

The U.S. continued to anchor Mexico’s heavy-duty truck exports, accounting for 92% of shipments during the first quarter, or 21,661 units, according to INEGI.

That dependence highlights how closely Mexico’s truck manufacturing sector is tied to U.S. freight cycles, fleet investment and replacement demand.

Officials from ANPACT emphasized that exports remain heavily concentrated in Class 8 and cargo units, with diesel trucks continuing to dominate production and outbound shipments.

“Our principal export product is cargo equipment,” Rogelio Arzate, president of Mexico’s National Association of Bus, Truck and Tractor-Trailer Producers (Anpact) said during the monthly briefing, noting that nearly all exported units in March were freight-focused vehicles.

The 16 members of Anpact in Mexico are Freightliner, Kenworth, Navistar, Hino, International, DINA, MAN SE, Mercedes-Benz, Isuzu, Scania, Shacman Trucks, Foton, Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Daimler Buses Mexico and Volkswagen Buses.

Exports mirror freight market softness

Export volumes also reflect broader freight market conditions, particularly in the U.S., where carriers have been cautious about adding capacity.

Mexico exported 10,625 units in March, down 6% from 11,288 units in the same month in 2025. On a quarterly basis, exports fell 30.3% to 23,550 units, signaling a sharp pullback in cross-border equipment flows.

Still, ANPACT officials noted that monthly export volumes have been rising since January, climbing from about 7,800 units in February to over 10,600 in March.

Freightliner was the top truck producer and exporter in Mexico in March, producing 8,366 trucks, a 1.4 year-over-year increase. The truck maker exported 8,097 units during the month, a 2.8% year-over-year decrease.

International Trucks Inc. was the No. 2 producer and exporter during February, manufacturing 2,990 trucks, a 2.7% year-over-year decrease. The truck maker’s exports fell 17.7% year-over-year to 2,359 units during the month.

Mexico Heavy-Duty Truck Production & Exports – March 2026

Key totals (INEGI):

• Production: 12,617 units (-6.6% YoY)
• Exports: 10,625 units (-5.9% YoY)
• U.S. share of exports (Q1): 92%

Top OEM production (March):

• Freightliner: 8,366 units
• International: 2,990 units
• Kenworth: 748 units
• Isuzu: 192 units

Top OEM exports (March):

• Freightliner: 8,097 units
• International: 2,359 units
• Kenworth: 169 units

Mix:

• Cargo trucks dominate production (~97% of output)
• Diesel remains primary powertrain across production and exports

Mexico’s Port of Manzanillo posts record Q1 container volumes 

Mexico’s busiest Pacific gateway, the Port of Manzanillo, handled a record 1,007,594 TEUs during the first quarter, marking a 2.9% year-over-year increase and the highest Q1 total ever recorded at a Mexican port.

The results underscore Manzanillo’s growing role as a key Pacific trade hub, particularly for export-driven supply chains linking Mexico with Asia and the U.S.

According to the ASIPONA, exports drove much of the growth, accounting for 45% of containerized cargo and rising 9.1% compared to last year. Imports made up 41% of volumes, slipping 1.1%, while transshipment activity represented 14%, declining 3.9%.

Containers dominated overall throughput, representing roughly 75% of total commercial cargo at the port. Bulk segments also remained significant, with mineral cargo—including iron pellets, copper concentrate and fertilizer inputs—making up 14%, and agricultural bulk shipments such as soybeans, wheat and barley accounting for 7%. 

General cargo, including machinery and steel products, represented the remaining 4%.

GM, SAIC weigh Mexico production amid tariff shifts

General Motors and its China-based joint venture SAIC-GM-Wuling are in advanced talks to launch vehicle production in Mexico, a move that could reshape North American supply chains as automakers respond to new import tariffs, according to Mexico Business News.

The potential shift follows recent Mexican tariff measures targeting Asian imports and comes as roughly 64% of GM’s vehicle sales in Mexico are sourced from China, making localization an increasingly strategic option.

Executives from the joint venture recently visited GM’s Toluca plant to evaluate manufacturing capabilities, identifying opportunities for product optimization and potential local production.

The move aims to position Mexico as a key production hub tied to Chinese-backed operations in North America, as rising tariffs and trade tensions push automakers to rethink sourcing and manufacturing strategies.

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First, Gord Magill is a friend and a fellow driver with decades of tenure behind the wheel. I bought this the day it came out. I actually bought a second, so Gord could sign the second while at the Mid-America Trucking Show. That means you should apply whatever weight you think appropriate to the fact that I’m about to tell you it is one of the best books written about the trucking industry in a very long time, and that every carrier owner, fleet manager, compliance professional, broker, shipper, policy maker, and working driver in this country should read it. I am telling you that because I believe it, not because Gord asked me to say it. Gord didn’t pay Freightwaves or me for this article/review. This is just professionals telling you that this is real trucking professionals highlighting the real issues of our industry and why the State of our highways is an outrage.

“End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers” is written by Magill, a third-generation trucker who has driven the ice roads of northern Canada, the deserts of the Australian Outback, and the highways of the continental United States. The third-generation part is important to me, as someone raised by blue-collar farmers and workers born in the 1930s and 1910s. If you meet his father, you immediately know you’re dealing with real, very genuine, passionate people. These are the types of people I try to keep in my very small circle for very good reasons. Gord is Canadian by birth, an American citizen now living in upstate New York, and he has been in a truck cab in some form or another for more than 30 years. That biography is the book’s entire argument for its own credibility. This is not a consulting firm’s white paper. It is not a policy analysis from someone who has spent their career in a Washington office building, wondering why carriers struggle to find drivers. This is a man who knows what it costs to get a CDL, what it costs to lease a truck, what it feels like to be surveilled for 11 hours at a stretch, and what it means to watch your profession get systematically dismantled by people who have never sat in a truck seat.

The book opens with the Freedom Convoy, the trucker-led 2022 protest in Canada that drew global attention and, in Magill’s telling, drew the most aggressive government response to peaceful political dissent in Canadian history. He participated in it. Why were truckers the ones who led it? His answer sets the thesis of everything that follows. Truckers did not emerge from nowhere in 2022. They emerged from decades of accumulated grievance, from a profession that had been methodically squeezed, surveilled, undermined, and lied to, until the Canadian government’s vaccine mandate was simply the last straw that broke what had already been badly bent.

From there, Magill takes you back to the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, which deregulated trucking rates and removed many of the controls that had kept the industry structured, predictable, and capable of sustaining a middle-class livelihood. He is fair about it. He acknowledges that the pre-1980 system had cartel-like qualities that were not entirely healthy. He traces what deregulation actually produced over the decades that followed: a relentless race to the bottom on rates, wages, and standards, driven by corporate interests that understood that flooding the driver supply was the most reliable way to keep labor costs suppressed. In inflation-adjusted terms, driver wages today are roughly half what they were 40 years ago. That is the intended result of a sustained policy campaign, and Magill names the players, the mechanisms, and the money behind it with the kind of specificity that makes the book genuinely uncomfortable reading.

The big lie at the center of all of it, the one Magill returns to throughout the book and dismantles thoroughly, is the driver shortage. I have been saying versions of this for years in this column and to anyone in the industry who will listen. There is no driver shortage. There has never been a driver shortage. There is a shortage of people willing to drive a truck, with wages artificially suppressed by a combination of corporate lobbying, government-funded CDL school proliferation, and the systematic importation of foreign labor explicitly intended to keep the supply of bodies behind the wheel high enough to hold rates low. Gord describes the American Trucking Associations, with characteristic bluntness as a corporate group that masquerades as a truckers’ organization while consistently working against the interests of actual truckers, as the loudest voice pushing the shortage narrative for decades. OOIDA has been saying the same thing Magill says. Lewie Pugh, OOIDA’s executive vice president, endorsed the book specifically because Magill’s argument aligns with what drivers and owner-operators have known from the inside for years.

The sections on CDL mill fraud and the systematic debasement of training standards read like a companion piece to my own investigative reporting in this publication. Magill traces how a credential that was once tied to something resembling an apprenticeship, where carriers invested in training new drivers and expected something real in return, became a transactional commodity that can be obtained through schools whose primary business model is collecting government-funded enrollment payments for bodies that are barely qualified to back a trailer into a dock. I have documented specific networks of fraudulent ELDT providers and medical examiners in this column. Magill explains exactly why those networks exist and who benefits from them. 

The surveillance chapter documents in detail how the combination of ELDs, forward- and cab-facing cameras, GPS tracking, and fleet management software has transformed the truck cab from one of the last genuinely independent workspaces in American labor into what he accurately describes as a virtual prison. The technology is sold as a safety tool. In many cases, it functions as a cost-extraction and liability-deflection tool for carriers and their insurers, while simultaneously destroying the autonomy that attracted many drivers to the profession in the first place. The data on driver retention and industry attrition support him. The average driver age is pushing 55. Young people are not choosing this career in the numbers the industry needs, and Magill makes a compelling case that the surveillance culture is a significant factor. I will say this for surveillance, we have a very different driver persona today than we had even ten years ago and an entirely different driver persona than we had 20 or more years ago. That change in driver persona is one reason I have encouraged in-cab technology. The drivers we now have on the road, enabled by reduced barriers to entry, absolutely need to be monitored. If we’re going to continue to place unqualified drivers in the cab, some level of surveillance will be necessary until we restore professionalism and barriers to entry. That’s me talking, not Gord. 

The immigration material is the part of the book that will generate the most debate, and I think Magill handles it more carefully than the people who will critique him for it will give him credit for. He argues that the immigration pipeline into commercial driving was deliberately engineered to undercut wages and depress standards, and that the people who engineered it knew exactly what they were doing and did not care about the safety consequences. The crash data, the CDL issuance fraud, the enforcement gaps, all of it connects to the economic argument, not the nativist one. The immigration chapter reads as naturally continuous with everything the Trump administration has been doing with FMCSA’s CDL audit campaign over the past year, not because Magill predicted the politics but because the underlying conditions he describes were producing inevitable enforcement pressure that anyone paying attention could see coming.

Matthew Crawford, who wrote “Why We Drive,” called this book one of the most illuminating he has read and potentially the most enraging. I think that is right. What makes it enraging is not Magill’s tone, which is measured and often darkly funny, as people who have spent 30 years watching a slow-motion institutional failure tend to be. What makes it enraging is the clarity with which he demonstrates that none of this was accidental. The wage compression, the standard debasement, the surveillance apparatus, the CDL fraud ecosystem, the fake shortage narrative, all of it traces back to identifiable decisions made by identifiable people and institutions pursuing identifiable financial interests. The truckers who got run over in the process were not collateral damage. They were the point.

If you have driven a truck, managed drivers, set rates, booked freight, underwritten motor carrier liability, or written a regulation that touches this industry, this book is about you and about the system you are operating in. Gord Magill wrote it for the drivers first. The people who most need to read it may be the ones who have spent their careers on the other side of the dock door. You can find “End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers” by Gord Magill on Amazon and wherever books are sold. It is a bestseller in transportation. Given everything happening in this industry right now, that is not a surprise, but it is long overdue.

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