Flying trucks: Air cargo companies take to the ground in search of freight. (Trade Lanes).

Cristiano da Matta roared across the finish line to first place in the Monterrey Gran Prix, giving the Brazilian driver his third consecutive CART FedEx Series victory. Race sponsor Federal Express is looking for the same sort of ground speed in Latin America.

Faced with a paucity of cargo, major air transport companies are going on the road, online and even into logistics and financing to grab freight in Latin America.

"We want to offer more than just our traditional express service," says Juan Cento, president of Latin America and the Caribbean at FedEx. "There are opportunities to offer deferred services like a combination of truck-air or all-ground service.

To that end, FedEx is relaunching the ground services of its subsidiaries Viking Freight and American Freightways under the FedEx Freight brand. It has also signed a cooperation agreement with Servicios Nacionales Mupa, better known as Multipack, to add 330 shipping destinations in Mexico.

Logistics company Danzas, the sister company of DHL Worldwide Express--both owned by Deutsche Poste--now offers a multilateral trucking network for cargo in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. "We have numerous programs in place," says Rafael Couttolenc, recently named senior vice president of DHL Latin America. "The challenge is to get midlevel management to focus on selling all of them."

United Parcel Service is also expanding its services. In a quest for southbound cargo, First International Bank, a unit of UPS Capital, ranked as the top provider of export and working capital loans from the U.S. Export-Import Bank in 2001. Shrinking plane bellies. UPS and others need to make use of all the tools at their disposal. In addition to the global recession, Argentina's economy crashed and many air cargo execs are concerned about trouble brewing in Venezuela. Air cargo in Miami, the region's leading hub, dropped to 1.4 million tons in 2001--down about 100,000 tons. And many all-freight players that have not gone out of business are parking planes to avoid flying half empty.

DHL, which relies heavily on belly space in commercial airlines, faces new obstacles to moving cargo in a timely manner. With the market downturn, airlines are using smaller planes and facing stiffer security requirements, making cargo harder to ship. Many of the Latin American carriers are grappling with financial difficulties, too.

"Trouble at an Aerolineas Argentinas, Varig or a LanChile would have an effect on a DHL because their system is structured in way that they rely on third party carriers," says Cento at FedEx. "We don't. We have continued to fly our five-days-a-week operations into Argentina."

But Couttolenc says DHL has not had major problems, adding that the company has been increasing its own fleet. DHL flies eight large and small aircraft and leases seven others. "We are not in the market of buying planes," says Couttolenc. "It doesn't matter how big your planes or buildings are if you don't have the right product."

Behind scheduled service on expensive FedEx equipment, Cento is trying to improve the company's product offering with minimal investment. In Mexico, the FedEx deal with Multipack offers a prototype of how Cento intends to expand in the region. In exchange for giving Multipack access to FedEx's global network, the U.S. company can offer a co-branded domestic service to more destinations via the Mexican company's network.

"In the future, we may decide to form a strategic alliance with a company in Brazil, in Colombia or Venezuela or Argentina," says Cento. "Our growth and investments in the future could be done through these alliances as opposed to us going directly into the market," says Cento.