On Monday, October 20, in Charlotte, Scott Cornell stood in front of a room full of fleet executives at the American Trucking Associations' Management Conference & Exhibition and told them something most of them already suspected: 'You are in the new normal.' Cornell is executive vice president and crime and theft specialist at SPG Cargo & Logistics and chairman of the Transported Asset Protection Association, and his point was not that theft is spiking this quarter. It is that the networks behind it now operate across borders, run theft as a sustained business, and have added fraud to force. The week around his talk supplied the illustrations. On October 13 a FedEx driver in Santa Ana, California, found the lock missing from his cargo door and two pallets of trading cards gone, a loss police put at about $963,000. On October 21 Highway's chief commercial officer told FreightWaves that fraud has shifted from fake carriers to social engineering of the broker's own process, including AI voices on the phone. And in Ventura County, sheriff's detectives watched a crew siphon diesel from parked commercial trucks before arresting four men on October 13. Three different crimes, one lesson: the weak point is wherever freight, data or fuel changes hands without anyone checking.
What Cornell told the room
The numbers behind 'new normal'
Strategic theft, which uses deception to get a business to hand freight to the wrong party (identity theft, fictitious pickups, double-brokering scams), rose 1,475% between 2021 and 2024 and now makes up roughly 25% to 33% of thefts, depending on the quarter.
Straight theft, the physical taking of freight from truck stops, drop lots, parking areas and distribution centers, still accounts for about 70% of cargo theft. The fraud wave did not replace the crowbar; it was added to it.
Reported 2025 losses: $724 million in declared value across nearly 3,600 reported cargo thefts. Cornell called that a fraction of the real cost once lost sales, brand damage, insurance, investigations and replacement production are counted. 'There's a much deeper value to every theft that we see.'
There is no national cargo theft database. Cornell estimates that CargoNet, the industry's main source, captures roughly one in ten full-truckload thefts, and a smaller share once pilferage is included.
New tactics: 'Trojan drivers' placed inside legitimate carriers who run clean low-value loads before taking a valuable one; stolen company identities and compromised email accounts used to book or redirect freight; devices that locate trackers or spoof ELD data; and pilferage of a few pallets instead of the whole trailer, which avoids the tractor, the trailer and the tracker.
Targets have moved from food and beverage (still prominent because it is hard to trace once consumed) to household goods during early COVID, electronics, and now copper and tungsten for industrial use, data center equipment and bitcoin-mining machines, some with declared values in the tens of millions of dollars.
Cornell's defensive advice was unglamorous. Brokers verify the carrier. Shippers and warehouses confirm that the driver and truck at the dock are the ones authorized to take the load. Verification platforms help, 'but technology is not a complete solution.' Train frontline staff: 'The best thing that you can do … is train your frontline staff.' And digitize the paperwork so a record exists of who changed a delivery address or schedule, and when. On policy, ATA's Alex Rosen said the coalition behind the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (H.R. 2853 and S. 1404) has grown past 200 industry partners. The bill would create a central reporting repository for supply chain theft and fraud inside the Department of Homeland Security and add federal investigative tools. The House passed it on May 12; ATA is now trying to attach its provisions to the National Defense Authorization Act because the Senate has not taken it up on its own.
Three cases from the same week
Santa Ana, October 13. A FedEx driver returned to his truck outside a Professional Sports Authenticator facility, the company that grades and encapsulates collectible cards, and found that the lock securing the rear cargo door was missing. Officers documented two missing pallets, each holding about 100 packages of Pokémon, sports and other trading cards, plus an undetermined number of parcels taken from a third pallet. Police initially valued the loss at approximately $963,000 and say the final figure could be higher once the inventory is complete. Other outlets reported the driver had been away 60 to 90 minutes; a Santa Ana police spokesperson told FreightWaves on Tuesday that investigators could not confirm that timeline and were reviewing the driver's account. Detectives went back to the PSA lot on October 20 for surveillance footage. Police do not yet know whether the theft happened in that lot or somewhere along the route, or whether the cards were targeted. No suspects, no arrests, no recovery. FedEx: 'The security of our customers' shipments is a top priority, and we are working with local law enforcement in their investigation.'
Highway, October 21. Michael Caney, chief commercial officer of the carrier-identity platform that 1,500 brokers pay for vetting, told FreightWaves that the fraud his company sees has moved off the rulebook. Carrier identity checks caught the fake-MC era; what is growing now is social engineering aimed at the broker's own staff, including voice AI that calls a brokerage and asks it to send load details to a new email address or by text. 'What is happening with fraud is a direct attack on process,' Caney said. 'It's no longer just about a set of rules.' Highway's own data: more than 82% of carriers hauling brokered freight qualify for its $100,000 performance guarantee (Highway pays if a broker follows its recommendations and the load is stolen anyway), while about 6% of carriers in a typical broker network are ones 'brokers shouldn't be talking to,' and some brokers load them anyway. Caney said Highway has covered a million loads under the guarantee and lost one. His proposal is a shared-accountability model: a load has five parties, not two (broker, carrier, insurer or agent, factoring company, telematics provider), 'yet none is accountable when a theft occurs.' Highway certified ten insurance agencies on June 1 to commit to accurate certificates down to the VIN and timely notice of cancellations, and wants factoring and ELD vendors next. 'There are FMCSA-certified ELD providers that we won't integrate with,' he said.
Ventura County, October 13. The low end of the same market. Since August, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office had been using automated license plate readers to tie a white van and a lookout vehicle to a string of fuel thefts from commercial trucks. On October 13 detectives watched the crew work, stopped both vehicles and arrested Alfonso Vargas, Alfonso Vargas Jr., Gilbert Flores and Miguel Cruz on conspiracy to commit theft, with more charges pending. The haul was modest, about 315 gallons worth more than $3,000 at Ventura County prices, and at least one broken fuel cap. The sheriff's office said the suspects 'traveled from the Los Angeles area into Ventura County to target commercial trucks and steal diesel fuel from the drivers who depend on those vehicles to earn a living.' With AAA's national diesel average at $6.32 on October 21, a full set of tanks is a $1,500 target parked in the open.
What CargoNet's last quarter actually showed
Verisk CargoNet's Q2 2026 report counted 677 incidents in the US and Canada, down 26% from Q2 2025 and 14% from Q1, but estimated losses of $304.6 million, more than double the $135.7 million a year earlier, with an average commodity value of $564,009 per theft. Fewer hits, bigger loads. Fictitious pickups barely moved (165 to 158); metal thefts rose from 54 to 80, with copper the top metal for two years running. Keith Lewis, CargoNet's vice president of operations: 'Lower incident volume should not be mistaken for lower risk.' Cornell's view of the dip, given to FreightWaves in July: 'It's not going to be a trend until we see it for maybe two or three quarters consecutively.' The Q3 report is due around the end of October.
What to do with this
For carriers, brokers and owner-operators
Treat the handoff as the crime scene. Before releasing a load, confirm the driver's name, truck and trailer against what the broker or carrier of record sent, by a channel you initiated, not the one the pickup came in on.
Never send a rate confirmation as an email attachment to an address you did not already have on file, and verify any 'new email' or 'text me the details' request by calling the number in your own records. That is exactly the social-engineering move Highway describes.
If you run brokered freight, ask your broker whether you qualify for a performance guarantee and what vetting they use. If you are the broker, assume 6% of the carriers in your network should not be there and find them before a shipper's lawyer does.
Park with the fuel caps and cargo doors facing light and cameras, lock the caps, and report siphoning to the local sheriff with your dashcam time stamp. License plate readers caught the Ventura crew because enough drivers reported it.
High-value, high-liquidity freight (cards, electronics, copper, mining rigs) gets a second check: seal numbers photographed at pickup, a tracker that is not where a thief expects it, and a dock that does not release to a truck that arrives early.
Report every theft and attempted fraud to CargoNet or your state task force even when the loss is small. The 'one in ten' reporting rate is why the problem is still sized by guesswork.
The old picture of cargo theft was a cut lock in a dark lot, and that picture is still true seven times out of ten. The new picture is a polite phone call to a broker's dispatcher, a carrier that looks perfect on paper, a driver who delivered three loads cleanly before the fourth went missing, and a FedEx van that was never broken into because the lock simply was not there when anyone looked. Cornell's message to Charlotte was that this is not a wave that will pass. It is the water level.
Theft, fraud and the rules that follow them, every week
Qrylo tracks CargoNet, the court cases and the bills that decide who pays when a load disappears.