Four Falls NB Port of Entry Closes Permanently — What It Means for Routing and Cargo Control

Four Falls Is Off the Map

CBSA announced that the Four Falls, New Brunswick port of entry — seasonal, out of service since 2020 — is now permanently closed. Four Falls sat on Route 108 near the Maine border, roughly 15 kilometres from two neighbouring crossings: Andover (24/7, Route 190) and Gillespie Portage (7 am–7 pm, Route 375).

For most brokers the news is administrative housekeeping. Four Falls never handled significant commercial volume, and the four-year shutdown already forced carriers to reroute. But the formal closure does three things worth noting: it removes the port code from the CBSA office directory, it eliminates any possibility of late-season reopening, and it clarifies which office inherits jurisdiction for any outstanding cargo control or exam holds tied to the old location.

What Changes on the eManifest and Cargo Control Side

If you filed eManifest highway ACE/ACI transmissions that listed Four Falls as the intended port of arrival in 2019 or earlier, those records are now orphaned. CBSA’s directory update means the office code is retired. Any carrier still running pre-2020 routing templates needs to scrub Four Falls from the dropdown and default to either Andover or Gillespie Portage.

For freight moving under PARS (Pre-Arrival Review System) or release prior to payment workflows, the practical consequence is straightforward: your carrier coordinator updates the intended port field in the eManifest transmission, and the cargo control number gets tied to the correct office. Miss that step and the highway carrier shows up at Andover with a cargo control doc pointing to a closed port code — CBSA kicks it back, the driver waits, and you burn an hour sorting it out by phone.

Gillespie Portage operates 7 am to 7 pm daily. Andover runs 24/7. If your LTL consolidator or dedicated truckload carrier habitually crosses after 7 pm, Andover is the only option. Make sure dispatch knows that before the truck rolls.

Jurisdiction for Outstanding Holds and Exams

The more obscure issue: if any commercial shipment sat in exam status at Four Falls before the 2020 closure and was never formally released or refused, CBSA needed to assign a successor office for file custody. The agency’s standard practice is to transfer unresolved exam holds to the nearest staffed office with commercial processing capability — in this case, Andover.

We have not seen active Four Falls exam files in the wild since 2019, but if you inherited a legacy importer account with unexplained AMPS penalty notices or unresolved cargo control discrepancies tied to northwestern New Brunswick in 2019–2020, it’s possible the underlying file is now sitting in Andover’s commercial unit. Pull the cargo control number, call the Andover office directly (506-273-3409), and ask whether the record transferred. Do not assume it vanished.

Border Crossing Hours and Driver Instructions

Andover (6 Route 190, Carlingford, NB) is open 24 hours, seven days a week. It handles commercial freight, courier shipments, and passenger vehicles. The office has CBSA officers on-site around the clock, so if your carrier needs flexibility for late arrivals or early morning crossings, Andover works.

Gillespie Portage (600 Route 375, California Settlement, NB) operates daily from 7 am to 7 pm. It is smaller, quieter, and generally faster for daytime crossings when traffic is light. If your carrier arrives outside those hours, the port is unstaffed and the driver has to divert to Andover or wait until morning.

For import managers coordinating dedicated truckload or LTL pickup schedules out of Maine, the driver instruction sheet needs to specify which crossing to use and what hours the truck is expected to arrive. Carriers that run dynamic routing software may still have Four Falls in the system as a fallback option — flag it now and remove it.

CBSA Office Directory and FIRMS Code Cleanup

The permanent closure also means Four Falls is removed from the CBSA office directory and from the Facility Information and Resources Management System (FIRMS) code list used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for northbound eManifest filings. If your U.S.-side freight forwarder or 3PL partner still has Four Falls in their port-of-arrival dropdown, they need to delete it. The FIRMS code is no longer valid, and any ACI or ACE transmission that references it will generate a data mismatch error when CBSA tries to match the inbound record to an active office.

For brokerage teams managing multi-carrier networks or coordinating with U.S.-based forwarders, this is a one-time cleanup task. Pull the carrier routing templates, check for Four Falls references, and replace them with Andover or Gillespie Portage. It takes ten minutes and prevents a driver delay three months from now.

Why Small Port Closures Still Matter

Four Falls was never a major commercial gateway. But the closure is a reminder that CBSA periodically consolidates low-traffic crossings, and when that happens the administrative aftershocks last longer than the press release. Cargo control records, exam holds, AMPS penalty notices, and eManifest routing templates all carry forward. If your compliance program includes quarterly audits of carrier routing data or cargo control reconciliation against CAD filings, add a line item for checking retired port codes.

The New Brunswick closure follows a similar pattern to seasonal or low-volume crossings in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia that shut down temporarily during COVID-19 and never reopened. CBSA’s fiscal reality is that staffing a remote crossing for a handful of daily crossings is expensive, and when traffic evaporates the office goes dark. For brokers and importers, the operational takeaway is simple: if your carrier network uses any crossing that handles fewer than a dozen commercial trucks per day, verify it is still open before you commit to a routing plan.

If your import volume into New Brunswick or the Maritimes runs through Andover or nearby crossings and you want a second set of eyes on cargo control workflows, eManifest setup, or release-prior-to-payment timing, get in touch.

Source: CSCB