This will help companies that are locating to El Paso to keep in touch with their associates and clients. This should be enough room for the airport's air cargo to continue to grow at its current 14 percent annual rate, at least for the next five years. It will certainly add to the regional economic infrastructure. One of the areas of this airport that we have been at capacity has been air cargo. The air cargo freight facility is the wave of the future in terms of border manufacturing, said Tom Fullerton, an assistant professor with the University of Texas at El Paso's Department of Economics and Finance.
Bulky items have a high transportation cost and are shipped by rail or truck.
The airport's investment in a new air cargo freight facility meshes perfectly with the new direction that border manufacturing is taking. Currently, a lot of air cargo leaves on trucks and goes to Dallas or Houston for air transportation, according to Bird. To gain more of that transportation revenue, the city plans to create an intermodal hub, incorporating the air cargo facility, the airport terminal, the air field at Fort Bliss and railroad and trucking terminals on a 13,000 acre site.