The old cargo-theft playbook was simple: wait for the long weekend, find a loaded trailer parked behind a closed warehouse, cut the seal. Verisk CargoNet's new five-year analysis of Labor Day weeks says that playbook is out of date. Of 273 thefts recorded in the seven-day windows around Labor Day from 2021 through 2025, the busiest day was Friday, and the four ordinary weekdays around the holiday produced 71% of the cases. The holiday itself was the quiet part. The thief now needs your office open.
The numbers
CargoNet, the Verisk unit that runs the industry's cargo-theft database, released the analysis on Friday, September 4, ahead of the 2026 holiday. Across the five Labor Day periods it logged 273 incidents with an estimated commodity value of about $31.8 million. The annual count climbed from 33 incidents in 2021 to 56 in 2025, a 70% increase, and peaked at 70 in 2024. Three states carried nearly half the load: California with 70 cases, Texas with 38 and Illinois with 22, together 130 incidents or 48% of the total. CargoNet ties that to dense freight networks, big consumer markets and intermodal hubs.
Food and beverage led the commodity list with 49 thefts, followed by household goods (27), electronics (25), vehicles and accessories (20) and metals (11). All are products that move quickly through resale channels. The wider year is worse than the holiday. In its July 4 analysis CargoNet estimated that cargo-theft losses topped $359 million in the first six months of 2026, with the average stolen load worth about $341,518, as organized groups go after metals, enterprise electronics and other high-value freight.
Why Friday beats the holiday
Friday led every day of the week with 55 incidents. Tuesday followed with 49, Thursday with 46 and Wednesday with 44; those four days account for 194 of the 273 cases. Saturday produced 24, Sunday 28 and Labor Day Monday 27. CargoNet's explanation is that the growth is in deceptive pickups and non-delivery schemes, and those crimes depend on a working business day: phone lines answered, dispatchers at their desks, freight actually being tendered. When everything shuts for the holiday, the fraud pauses too, and it comes back when the loads do.
The report describes two overlapping risks. The first is the familiar physical one: loaded freight sitting still during closures or schedule disruptions. The second is what CargoNet calls verification exposure. Thin holiday staffing plus time pressure makes it easier for a criminal to impersonate a carrier, change instructions or slip a fraudulent phone number into the paperwork. Increasingly the entry point is not a stolen MC number at all but a compromised one: a legitimate carrier's email account, business phone line or compliance-platform login. Once inside, the thief can change delivery instructions after a real trucking company has already picked up the load, which sails past any safeguard that only checks who you hired.
“ These schemes are becoming more personal, more technical, and more convincing. Fraud actors are no longer relying only on spoofed emails or fake documents. ”
What the report does not say
Verisk did not name victims, suspects, carriers or investigations, and did not split the 273 cases between physical thefts and identity-based schemes. Individual loss amounts and recovery rates were not released. The dollar figures are CargoNet's estimates of commodity value, not insured losses.
What to do before the next long weekend
Checklist
Treat the Friday before and the Tuesday after a holiday as your highest-risk shifts, not the holiday itself. Schedule your most experienced dispatch and verification staff there.
Any change to a delivery address, consignee contact or driver phone number after tender is a red flag. Confirm it by calling the carrier back at the number in FMCSA's register, never at the number in the email that asked for the change.
Lock down carrier accounts: two-factor authentication on email and load-board logins, and a rule that instructions from a new phone number are not instructions.
For loads that must sit over a closure, especially food, electronics and metals in California, Texas or Illinois, use a secured yard, a tracked trailer and a high-security seal, and record who has the seal number.
Drivers: if a 'broker' calls to redirect a load you are already carrying, stop and call your own dispatcher first. The person who booked the load is the only one who can change it.
CargoNet's bottom line is that routine business gives criminals more openings than a locked gate does. A shipper who spends the holiday worrying about the parked trailer and then relaxes on Tuesday has the risk calendar exactly backwards.
Cargo theft and freight fraud, every week
Theft patterns, pickup-verification practices and compliance coverage for carriers, brokers and owner-operators on Qrylo.