Cargo theft is on the rise, and we’re not just talking about small-scale shoplifting. Across the globe, entire trailers and containers are going missing.
Newspaper headlines from the past year alone tell the story, describing how thieves swiped 11,000 bottles of bourbon from a North Philadelphia warehouse, $1.7 million worth of condoms headed to a Walmart DC in Pennsylvania, 40,000 pounds of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer from a California warehouse, $400,000 worth of lobsters from a Massachusetts seafood warehouse, and 400,000 KitKat chocolate bars from a warehouse in Poland.
But talk to the logistics professionals who oversee warehouse docks and freight yards, and few of them blame armed mobsters or masked carjackers. Rather, the culprits frequently drive up to a DC in broad daylight, present realistic-looking credentials, then hook up their tractor to a loaded trailer and cruise off down the highway. A few days later, that facility might get a call from a confused customer who never received their shipment. But by then it’s too late, and the entire load has vanished into thin air.
In the words of Curtis Spencer, CEO of global trade service specialist IMS Worldwide, “criminals are increasingly walking through the front door instead of breaking down a gate. Fictitious pickups, where someone shows up with forged carrier credentials and a booking that looks completely legitimate, are climbing fast, and [recent statistics show] that nearly a third of U.S. cargo theft incidents last year involved no forced entry at all: just a stolen identity, a cloned motor carrier number, or a hijacked email thread.”
LOWER VOLUME, HIGHER IMPACT
So who’s to blame here? Industry experts say the answer is computer hackers, armed not with pistols and picklocks but with proficiency in the dark arts of spoofing, phishing, double brokering, and identity theft.
Those techniques can be so effective that they’ve produced a paradoxical result: Incidents of cargo theft have actually declined in the past year, but the financial impact of those crimes has escalated sharply, according to security analytics firm Verisk CargoNet. In its second-quarter 2026 cargo-theft analysis, the company said it documented 677 supply chain theft incidents across the U.S. and Canada during Q2, a 26% decline from Q2 2025. Yet total estimated cargo losses more than doubled in that same period—$304.6 million in Q2 2026 versus $135.7 million in Q2 2025—driven by high-value metals and technology heists, the company said.
“Lower incident volume should not be mistaken for lower risk,” said Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at Verisk CargoNet, in a statement announcing the study’s findings. “The groups driving the largest losses are not necessarily trying to steal more freight; they are trying to identify the right shipment. Their focus on metals and enterprise technology shows how closely organized cargo theft now follows value, demand, and resale opportunity.”
Analysts with Verisk CargoNet say the primary access point for sophisticated cargo theft schemes is through business email compromise, where criminals convince unwary employees of a targeted company to click on pernicious links or to share their personal passwords.
And once they’ve broken into a freight company’s computer system, the hackers have the keys to the kingdom. Compromised accounts can provide criminals with access to shipment information, communication systems, contact directories, and transportation management tools. And that access may enable them to identify high-value shipments, impersonate trusted parties, and alter shipment details while appearing legitimate to brokers, carriers, shippers, and receivers, Verisk CargoNet says.
NO MORE “SMASH AND GRAB”
Verisk CargoNet is hardly alone in its assessment. The National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) came to much the same conclusion in its “2026 Transportation Industry Cybersecurity Trends Report.”
Throughout 2025, cybercriminal activity demonstrated a new degree of sophistication and increased specialization, the report noted. And today, the North American transportation sector faces the most complex and dynamic cyberthreat environment in its history, it said. The convergence of traditional cargo theft, cybercrime, and operational disruptions has transformed trucking cybersecurity from an IT issue into a full-spectrum operational resilience challenge, the report concluded.
The con games are making life hard for logistics professionals everywhere, agrees Eric Fullerton, vice president of product marketing at project44, a cloud-based supply chain visibility and logistics technology company. “The biggest shift is the maturation in the type of theft schemes. What we’ve seen is an increase in identity fraud rather than the traditional ‘smash-and-grab’ theft,” he says. “We are seeing criminals impersonate real carriers and brokers (cloned MC [motor carrier] numbers, spoofed emails, fake paperwork, even spoofed GPS) with the purpose of having cargo handed to them willingly instead of having to break into a trailer. The elegance and the maturity of these fraudulent activities is significantly higher and continuing to sharpen.”
Part of the explanation for that trend lies in the very nature of our modern supply chain, says Lauren Fitzpatrick, director of data science at project44. “Today, freight changes hands constantly: shipper to broker to carrier to driver to warehouse, truck to train to ocean. Every one of those handoffs is a trust decision, sometimes made quite quickly, often over email or a phone call. Aspects of these handoffs are easy to spoof,” she says.
“And when you consider the massive scale of goods and shipments moving through the global supply chain, there are crevasses of opportunity,” Fitzpatrick adds. “The spot market for a truckload really exacerbates this: A broker can book an unfamiliar carrier in minutes without enough time to verify who they are. That design—speed over verification when you’re in a bind—is exactly what organized theft rings are exploiting right now.”
Supply chains are vulnerable for the same reasons they’re efficient, agrees IMS’s Spencer. “Every handoff between a shipper, a broker, a carrier, and sometimes a sub-hauled driver is a moment where verification can break down, and modern freight networks are built for speed, not friction,” he says. “Digital loadboards and rate confirmations move fast because they have to, and that same speed is what lets someone pose as a legitimate carrier and disappear with a load before anyone double-checks who they actually are.”
BUILDING BETTER DEFENSES
So what can logistics professionals do to shore up their defenses? In Fullerton’s view, part of the answer is to broaden their approach to security and look beyond just the physical apparatus. “One recurring mistake [I’ve seen companies make] is investing only in physical security: things like fencing, gate cameras, GPS locks, when in many of these examples, thieves are walking through the front door with a fake identity,” he says. “It’s much more than just physical security; you need that technological security layer as well.
“One of the things that’s working really well is treating carrier vetting as ongoing instead of a one-time onboarding check, plugging into shared intelligence networks, using AI [artificial intelligence]-enhanced pattern matching to catch compromised identities before they hit you, and relying on trusted technology partners who can pre-vet these carriers on your behalf and confirm their legitimacy,” Fullerton adds.
The best defense is a group effort, agrees Spencer. “Brokers and 3PLs sit at the identity-verification chokepoint, so they carry real responsibility for confirming who they’re actually handing a load to, independently, not just by calling the number printed on a rate confirmation that a criminal could have supplied in the first place,” he says. “Carriers need driver and equipment verification at pickup. Warehouse and distribution center operators need access control and separation of duties, because a meaningful share of strategic theft involves someone with legitimate inside knowledge feeding intelligence to outside actors.”
CALL THE COPS
Despite their best efforts, even seasoned pros sometimes find that shipments go missing. So is there any hope of recovering a lost shipment?
“If you suspect or discover you’ve been the victim of cargo theft, you really want to move fast,” says project44’s Fitzpatrick. “Scammers rely on their fake contact information looking legitimate at that moment in time, so if something feels off, don’t verify through the number that just reached out to you. Call back on a number already in your carrier file instead to [guard against] spoofing. Then report it immediately: local police in the jurisdiction where the freight was taken, the FBI, CargoNet (if you’re a member), and your insurer, all in parallel.”
Acting fast is critical, Spencer says. “Speed is everything, and the biggest mistake companies make is working the internal chain of command before they call anyone outside the building,” he says. “The moment a theft is discovered, call the police in the jurisdiction where the freight was actually taken, not just [the one] where your headquarters sits since that agency may not have jurisdiction to even file a report. Have the truck and trailer’s make, model, VIN [vehicle identification number], and license plate ready, along with the bill of lading, product descriptions, SKUs [stock-keeping units], and value, because that’s what turns it into a real investigation instead of something law enforcement waves off as a civil dispute.”
Computer-age bandits have clearly set their sights on freight haulers in 2026 and are snatching up trailers and cargo containers as fast as their fingers can type in fraudulent credentials. In light of the escalating threat, security experts advise carriers, shippers, and receivers to sharpen their cyberdefense skills and then work together to tighten and secure all the links of their digital supply chains.
