LumpList

The lumper service directory

by the makers of LumpLogix

State record

Lumper services in Texas

Texas moves freight through two land border crossings, a Gulf container port and a Dallas rail hub, and lumping companies staff docks across all of them.

40 lumping companies on the record

Lumping companies serving Texas

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Dock labor in Texas

Agencies on the record
40
Based or dispatching in state
20
Nationwide operators
20

Texas dock labor follows three flows: Gulf imports, Mexican land trade, and the inland distribution belt along I-35. Houston crews work the container terminals at Bayport and Barbours Cut and the resin and consumer-goods warehouses ringing Beltway 8. Dallas-Fort Worth is the rail market, with BNSF's Alliance intermodal facility at Haslet and Union Pacific's Dallas Intermodal Terminal at Wilmer anchoring warehouse clusters in Alliance, Wilmer and south Fort Worth. Laredo and El Paso live on transloading, shifting Mexican trailers onto US equipment at the World Trade Bridge and the Ysleta crossing.

South Texas runs on produce. McAllen and the Pharr International Bridge take avocados, limes, tomatoes and berries north through winter and spring, and Brownsville adds port cargo and wind components. Midland staffs oilfield supply and pipe yards for the Permian Basin. Austin, San Antonio and Waco sit on the I-35 corridor between the border and the metroplex, where cross-dock and retail replenishment work is steady rather than seasonal.

Freight unloaders work bilingual crews, floor-loaded international containers and hand-stacked border freight, work most facilities cannot absorb in-house.

Last reviewed September 2026

Texas on the record

  1. Laredo's World Trade Bridge is the leading commercial truck crossing on the US southern border, and freight arriving there is routinely transloaded from Mexican to US trailers before it moves north on I-35.

    Source: US Customs and Border Protection border crossing data; Texas Department of Transportation border trade reporting

  2. Port Houston handles containers at the Bayport and Barbours Cut terminals, feeding import warehouses along Beltway 8, SH 225 and the Grand Parkway.

    Source: Port Houston terminal information

  3. Dallas-Fort Worth carries two Class I intermodal hubs: BNSF's Alliance intermodal facility at Haslet inside AllianceTexas, and Union Pacific's Dallas Intermodal Terminal at Wilmer.

    Source: BNSF Railway and Union Pacific intermodal facility listings

  4. The Pharr International Bridge in Hidalgo County is the primary produce crossing for Mexican avocados, limes, tomatoes, peppers and berries, with volume concentrated in the winter and spring shipping season.

    Source: USDA Agricultural Marketing Service shipping point and movement data; City of Pharr International Bridge

  5. I-35 links Laredo through San Antonio, Austin, Waco and Dallas-Fort Worth, while I-10 runs El Paso to Houston and I-20 and I-45 tie the metroplex to Midland and to the Gulf.

    Source: Texas Department of Transportation interstate corridor maps

  6. The Port of Brownsville handles steel, project cargo and wind energy components, and El Paso's warehouse market extends across the state line into Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

    Source: Port of Brownsville cargo information; New Mexico Border Authority

Inside the Texas market

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Reading for Texas operators

Questions about dock labor in Texas

How does border transloading change what a lumper crew does in Texas?

At Laredo, El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley bridges, southbound and northbound freight is commonly moved between Mexican and US trailers at a yard near the crossing. That is hand work: floor-loaded cartons, restacking to US pallet patterns, and rebuilding loads to fit domestic trailer cube. Crews at these yards are bilingual and often work around customs holds, so trailer unloading is scheduled against broker clearance rather than a fixed dock appointment.

When is produce season busiest for dock labor in South Texas?

Volume through Pharr and the McAllen cold storage cluster builds in late fall and peaks through winter and early spring, when Mexican avocados, limes, tomatoes, peppers and berries cross north, per USDA AMS movement reporting. Reefer receivers add night shifts, and third-party unloading demand tracks the crossing schedule, not the retail week.

Does import timing at Port Houston drive lumper demand inland?

Yes. Containers discharged at Bayport and Barbours Cut are drayed to Houston-area warehouses within days, so a heavy vessel week shows up as a devanning surge at import buildings off Beltway 8 and SH 225. The same containers, once transloaded to 53-foot trailers, reach Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio DCs shortly after, which is why the metroplex sees a second wave of unloading work.