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geography, transportation
infrastructure, labor sup-
ply and costs, and business
environment, Sanderson
says. “The great thing
about Texas,” he adds, “is
you can check off almost
every box.”
The first “box” that
Sanderson (and most loca-
tion experts) check off is
location. Texas’s central
location makes it relatively easy to
reach consumer markets all across
the country. On top of that, the
state has a large and growing con-
sumer market of its own. Six of the
country’s 20 most populous cities
are in Texas: Houston, San Antonio,
Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, and
El Paso. Four of those cities—
Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and
Dallas—also rank in the top 10
fastest-growing major cities in the
United States, according to Forbes
magazine.
Texas also has undeniable geo-
graphic advantages for companies
engaged in international trade, par-
ticularly with Mexico. Mexico has
been benefiting from the growth of
“nearshoring,” as more and more
companies bring manufacturing
back from Asia and closer to con-
sumer markets in North America,
reports Marcel Johnson, vice pres-
ident of business development
at industrial developer Port San
Antonio. That, in turn, has ben-
efited Texas. Many of the goods
being manufactured in Mexico,
particularly automotive compo-
nents, are then brought into Texas
for distribution to the rest of the
United States or are being partially
made in Mexico and partially in
Texas, Johnson says.
For this reason, the border
towns of Laredo and El Paso have
increasingly become hotbeds of
logistics and distribution center activity.
Growth in trade with Mexico has also
sparked a boomlet in the DC market in
Dallas/Fort Worth, as the metropolis has
proved to be an attractive consolidation
point for Mexican-made goods heading
north on I- 20 or east/west on I- 35.
It’s important to note that Texas’s international trade is not one-sided. According
to the state’s Office for Economic
Development & Tourism, Texas is the
country’s top exporting state, with more
than $297.7 billion in exports. Texas’s top
export partners are Mexico, Canada, Brazil,
China, and the Netherlands; its principal
exports include petroleum and coal, chemicals, computers, nonelectrical machinery,
and transportation equipment.
ROBUST INFRASTRUCTURE
In addition to being centrally located, Texas
also boasts one of the strongest transportation networks in the U.S. “From a pure
logistics standpoint, you can ‘get there
from here,’” says Terry Darrow, managing
director of industrial real estate firm Jones
Lang LaSalle’s Dallas office.
For example, Texas has over 3,000 miles
of highways, more than any other state.
“We also do a fairly good job of overbuild-
ing our roadways,” says Will Condrey,
associate director for the Houston office of
Cushman & Wakefield, an industrial real
estate firm. “We do not have, like a lot of
other markets, heavy-haul corridors, and as
a result of that, trucks are welcome on all
major thoroughfares.”
Texas is also home to the second-longest
rail system in the country and is served by
three Class I railroads: the Union Pacific,
the Kansas City Southern, and the Fort
Worth-based BNSF Railway. The rail sys-
tem connects Texas to both coasts as well
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