Can a US citizen immigrate to Mexico and be a trucker?

Swift has a Mexican carrier called TransMex. Wasn't sure from your post if you were wanting to just do some local deliveries or if OTR was a consideration. Would be a way to spend some time in the states as well as living in Mexico.

I assume driving for a subsidiary of an American company as an immigrant would be pretty feasible.

There's also tons of companies that run short radius into Laredo, El Paso, Brownsville, etc.

I assume any of those options would be a little better suited for you than delivering some 'agriculture materials' to the boonies of Mexico lol. In fact, being a native English speaker would probably give you a leg up in those jobs as long as you're fluent in Spanish as well

 

I don't have any firsthand knowledge about this, but I do have some pretty good secondhand info from a couple of sources, fwiw.

Some years ago I worked with a younger Mexican guy who drove for the same manufacturer as I did. We were the only two CDL drivers there. He had come up here illegally, then fell in love. His then-future wife told him he had to go back to Mexico and immigrate legally or she wouldn't marry him, so he did. He was there for two years before he could come back legally. They have kids and a house now. He drove garbage trucks here for four years before he landed the job where I knew him.

He told me that in Mexico to get the equivalent of a CDL, you have to drive a bus in Mexico City for two years. Then you can drive a truck, but at first the only loads you'll get are the dangerous loads from Mexico City to the U.S. border. (Dangerous because of cargo theft, cartel roadblocks, etc.) When you unload at the border, it might be a few days or a week before you get a load back to Mexico City, and the job doesn't pay much. He said that situation can last quite a while, like years, before you get something better. And trucks can only enter the city during certain hours, very strictly regulated.

So there's that.

Also, my brother lived in Mexico for over five years. He ran a manufacturing plant in Querétaro state. After the company was sold to another company, he stayed there for a few years and lived off his buyout. He said that state was the safest because the cartels had an agreement not to kill each other's families there, so a lot of their families lived there and it was relatively peaceful. That changed, though, so he moved back here about ten years ago. He followed the news down there and still had friends there. He told me several times that there was nowhere safe in Mexico any more, not even the usually safe tourist areas.

By the way, he sent his daughter to a private school that taught ESL (they spoke Spanish at home), and her teachers had degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. I don't think they were making that much money, either, more of an adventure type job for them.

Finally, the missus went to the University of Saltillo for a year back in the 80s. (Spanish major, studied a year in Barcelona also.) She says that the whole thing with staying safe is that you don't talk about crime or the cartels to anyone, you mind your own business, and you don't do anything stupid. My brother agreed, but his point was that even with that, the criminals are now so much in charge that even if you keep a low profile and mind your own business, there's no guarantee you won't be targeted unless you have a lot of extended family there that will help you watch out, and even that may not be enough.

In other words, yes, it could be an adventure, but it might not be the safest thing to do. And probably you will not be able to develop a fallback job as a truck driver in Mexico.

 

Am I missing something? All I got from the original post was “I just want to make the bare minimum to live.”

 

It cost a fraction to live in Mexico than the states. I know individuals that live at the Mexican border “Beaches”(higher end homes) and commute to the states to work.

 

Not everyone wants to "live" life as a wage slave. Debt keeps people on the modern day plantation.

 

Working to live here or there is the same thing.

 

There's a difference between working and slaving.

 

It is easy and common among people in certain US states to retire to Mexico and live very well on just an average Social Security check. You can't own land, as a foreigner, but you can get a 99 year lease or just rent. A girlfriend's family in high school vacationed in Hermosilla every year and planned to retire to the town. There are/were lots of Americans living there. I'm not sure about safety in the various places in the country.

 

If an American was to retire in Mexico, you would have to watch your back when out and about, if some greedy mother f’er finds out your from the states, they usually know you have money coming in, next you know, they’ll hold you for ransom and/or take your life savings from you. The locals know and can tell by the way you dress where your from, the if the words gets around, it’s bound to fall on greedy ears. I visit and vacation in Mexico a lot, but would never ever planned on retiring there.

 

As I mentioned in post #17; US CDL is not recognized and one needs to be a Mexican National to get a CDL to operate a CMV in Mexico.