Ocean Oct 17, 2026 · 8 min read

Hurricane Trudy shuts Manzanillo, Mexico’s biggest box port

Trudy shuts Manzanillo for the third time in four weeks. Manzanillo, which handled 2.07 million TEU (twenty-foot containers) in the first half of 2026, closed to ships over 500 gross tonnage at 21:00 on 16 October as Hurricane Trudy approached, Gomsa reports. Maersk expects to restart at 07:00 on Monday 19 October. In our view the restart time matters less than the queue. This is the port’s third storm stoppage since late September, after Polo and Simon. Hutchison’s TIMSA terminal has moved Saturday’s appointments to Monday. Our call: gate and yard delays at Manzanillo will run until at least Friday 23 October, and vessel schedules will not recover before November.

Trudy is Manzanillo’s third storm shutdown in four weeks, and the backlog will outlast the wind
Mexico’s largest container port has been closed to big ships since 21:00 on Friday 16 October. Manzanillo’s Harbour Master (the Capitanía de Puerto, part of Mexico’s navy ministry) issued Oficio 5631/2026. Gomsa, a Mexican customs broker that reported the notice, says it declared “cerrado el puerto a la navegación de altura y cabotaje” (translation: the port closed to ocean-going and coastal navigation). The closure covers vessels over 500 GT, or gross tonnage, a measure of a ship’s size. In practice that means every container ship.
The cause is Hurricane Trudy. AP, reporting on weather.com, said Trudy was a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph on Saturday morning. It was less than 200 miles south-southeast of Manzanillo and moving northwest at 8 mph. A hurricane warning covered the coast from Manzanillo to Cabo Corrientes in Jalisco.
Our view is simple. The reopening date is the easy part. The hard part is the queue. This is the third time since late September that a storm has stopped work at Manzanillo, and the gaps between them are getting too short for the port to catch up.

How the port shut down

The terminals did not all stop at once. They closed in stages through Saturday 17 October, according to notices collected by Gomsa and POSTA México.

TEC (SSA Marine): Import deliveries stopped from 08:00 on Saturday. POSTA reports: “Se suspenderá la entrega de importación a partir de las 8:00 horas del sábado 17 de octubre” (translation: import delivery will be suspended from 08:00 on Saturday 17 October).

SSA Marine México: Empty containers and exports stopped from 05:00 on 17 October until further notice. External yards and CFS/LCL work stopped from 12:00. CFS means container freight station, where LCL (less-than-container-load, or shared-container) cargo is packed and unpacked.

Terminal TAP: Stopped work on Saturday 17 October, with no restart time given.

Hutchison Ports TIMSA: Moved all Saturday appointments for deliveries, receipts, pre-services and empties to Monday 19 October.

Contecon Manzanillo: Honoured existing Friday and Saturday appointments but added none. It will open import and export appointments only after 12:00 on Monday 19 October. Its pre-inspections (“previos”, the customs pre-checks of cargo before clearance) will not run on Monday and resume on Tuesday 20 October.

Maersk: Stopped receipt, delivery and gate service from 14:00 on Saturday. POSTA reports that “Maersk estima la reanudación de operaciones el lunes 19 de octubre” (translation: Maersk estimates operations will resume on Monday 19 October), at 07:00.

POSTA says port operations were suspended from 14:00 on Saturday and that ships were sent to anchorages to ride out the storm. Its overall estimate is a restart between Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 October, depending on Trudy’s path and sea conditions.
Gomsa’s own advice to clients is the line that matters most. It tells them to expect “mayor concentración de operaciones” (translation: a heavier concentration of operations) and possible delays from Monday 19 October.

Where Trudy is heading

The storm has been hard to read. Dominican Today reported that Trudy reached Category 3 on Friday, with 120 mph winds. It cited Reuters saying the storm could pass within roughly 60 to 65 km of the Jalisco and Colima coasts late Saturday, and said a direct landfall was not expected at that point. FOX Weather then reported Trudy had weakened to Category 1 at 85 mph. It quoted its forecast centre: “Some forecast models even show a possible landfall, but confidence in the exact track remains low.”
AccuWeather’s tracker later showed Trudy back at Category 2, with 100 mph sustained winds and 120 mph gusts, about 100 miles from Manzanillo and moving northwest at 12 mph. AP said the closest pass is expected on Sunday. It forecast 4 to 8 inches of rain, with isolated totals near 15 inches. The Mexican navy urged mariners and coastal residents to “exercise extreme caution due to high waves, heavy rains and the risk of rising river levels”, according to AP.
Rain is the bigger risk for freight. Colima officials told AP that risks were low for now but warned of significant rainfall, and AP noted that the ground is already saturated from earlier storms. Meganoticias reported that six temporary shelters had opened in Manzanillo, Tecomán, Armería and Comala, and that the port remained closed to all vessels.

Three storms, one port

Trudy did not arrive alone. This Eastern Pacific season has been extreme. FOX Weather says it has already passed 2018 as the most energetic on record, at more than 319 units of ACE (accumulated cyclone energy, a measure that combines storm strength and duration).
Manzanillo has paid for that:

Hurricane Polo, late September. Buckland, a logistics provider, reported that the Harbour Master closed the port “to vessels over 500 GT (ocean-going and coastal shipping) until further notice” as the Category 4 storm sat off Colima. SSA Marine suspended empty-container moves.

Hurricane Simon, 9–12 October. C.H. Robinson’s advisory said Contecon, SSA Marine and TIMSA would close on Saturday 10 October and that TAP stopped cargo dispatch on Friday 9 October. Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico’s other big Pacific box port, closed to all vessels too. TyT reported that Manzanillo reopened to ships over 500 GT at 09:00 on Monday 12 October.

Hurricane Trudy, from 16 October. Closed to ships from Friday night, terminals stopped in stages on Saturday, and the earliest restart is Monday.

That is roughly two lost weekends of gate time in eight days, with only four working days between them. Trucks, chassis and terminal labour had barely cleared Simon’s backlog before Trudy arrived.

Why this port matters

Manzanillo is not a side door. Cluster Industrial, citing the port authority, reported that its terminals handled 2,071,000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units, the standard container measure) between January and June 2026. That was a first-half record and growth of close to 10% a year. Imports were 41% of that volume, exports 44% and transshipment 15%. MexicoIndustry reported that Manzanillo handles almost half of Mexico’s container cargo and is on track to be the first Mexican port to pass 4 million TEU in a year.
Those half-year figures work out to roughly 11,400 TEU a day. That number is our own arithmetic, not an official figure. Every lost day pushes that volume onto the days that follow.
C.H. Robinson’s Simon advisory set out what follows a closure here, and it applies again now. It warned of long truck lines at the port, slower customs processing and tight carrier capacity after reopening. It added that floods or landslides could close roads from the coast to the Bajío and central Mexico, delaying trucking even once the port is open. It also warned that late Asian components for Mexican factories could delay northbound shipments to the US. Its line for shippers was: “Expect delays greater than usual for cargo moving through both ports through the weekend and into next week.”

What forwarders should do now

Our reading of the next week, in practical terms:

Free time and demurrage. Boxes landed before the closure are sitting in yards that cannot deliver them. Check each carrier’s free-time terms now and ask in writing for weather extensions. Some will grant them and some will not, and that difference is worth knowing before invoices arrive.

Truck appointments. TIMSA has moved Saturday bookings to Monday, Contecon opens only after Monday noon, and pre-inspections at Contecon wait until Tuesday. That squeezes Monday and Tuesday hard. Book trucks for Tuesday through Thursday rather than fighting for Monday slots.

Customs timing. With no “previos” at Contecon on Monday, clearances that need a pre-check slip at least a day. Tell importers now, not on Tuesday.

Inland legs. Watch roads from the coast to the Bajío and rail out of Manzanillo for flood and landslide closures, as C.H. Robinson flagged during Simon. A clear port does not help if the road is shut.

Vessel schedules. Ships riding out the storm at anchor will all want berths at once. Expect berth windows on Asia–Mexico services to slide, and expect some carriers to cut port calls or skip Manzanillo on a rotation to protect their schedules. That last point is our expectation, not something any carrier has announced.

Exports and empties. SSA Marine stopped empties and exports first, from 05:00 on Saturday. Exporters waiting on empty containers should expect equipment to be tight into midweek.

The closure also touches US-bound freight. Asian cargo landed at Manzanillo for factories in Mexico feeds finished goods moving north. We expect delays here to show up at the US border a week or two later.
A smaller storm story is running on the other side of the Pacific. AP reported that Typhoon Champi had 130 mph sustained winds and was forecast to pass just south of Guam, with a typhoon warning for Guam and Rota. Cargo to Guam and the Northern Marianas faces disruption, but that is a niche lane next to Manzanillo.

Our call

Our prediction: Manzanillo’s terminals will reopen on Monday 19 or Tuesday 20 October, as Maersk and POSTA expect. Gate queues, yard congestion and customs delays will still last until at least Friday 23 October. Vessel schedules on Asia–Mexico Pacific services will not return to normal before the first week of November. If the Eastern Pacific produces one more storm before the season ends on 30 November, we expect shippers on this lane to start asking carriers for weather clauses on free time as standard in their 2027 contracts.

Sources