Verisk CargoNet recorded 677 supply chain theft incidents in the second quarter of 2026 — a 26% drop from the same quarter in 2025. Good news, until you look at what those thefts cost.
Total estimated losses more than doubled to $304.6 million, up from $135.7 million a year earlier. The average incident with a reported commodity value came in around $564,000.
Fewer thefts. Twice the money. That is not a crime wave getting worse at random — it is a crime business getting better at targeting.
This is a news summary, not legal or insurance advice.
What the numbers actually say
| Measure | Q2 2025 | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Total incidents | — | 677 (−26% year over year) |
| Theft events | 488 | 378 |
| Fictitious pickups | 165 | 158 |
| Estimated losses | $135.7M | $304.6M |
For context, CargoNet put full-year 2025 losses at roughly $725 million, a 60% jump over 2024, with the average theft value rising 36% to about $273,990.
Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at Verisk CargoNet, put the shift plainly: "The groups driving the largest losses are not necessarily trying to steal more freight; they are trying to identify the right shipment."
What they are identifying: metals, especially copper, and high-end technology — networking gear, components, cryptocurrency mining hardware. Food and beverage theft, long the volume leader, declined.
The lock on the trailer stopped being the problem
There are two broad kinds of cargo theft, and the balance has shifted hard toward the second.
Straight theft is what the phrase brings to mind: a trailer taken from a lot, a container pilfered, a load hijacked. Physical, opportunistic, and largely solved by where and how you park.
Strategic theft is fraud. Nobody cuts a lock. Someone poses as a legitimate carrier, produces plausible paperwork, and is handed the freight. Variations include fictitious pickups, double brokering, and identity theft of real carriers with clean authority and clean CSA records.
CargoNet's Q2 data showed business email compromise remaining the primary access point for the sophisticated schemes. Somebody gets into a mailbox — a broker's, a shipper's, sometimes a carrier's — reads the traffic, learns the routine, and inserts themselves at exactly the right moment with exactly the right language.
That is why the losses concentrate. A crew that can read your email until a copper load appears does not need to steal fifty trailers.
Where carriers actually get hit
- Your identity gets borrowed. Your MC number, your DOT number, your insurance certificate with the numbers altered. The load goes missing and the first call comes to you.
- Your driver hands it over. The paperwork looked right, the pickup number matched, the person at the gate knew the load details.
- Your load sits. Long weekends are the classic window. Freight that would move Friday afternoon sits until Tuesday in a yard nobody is watching.
- Your email gets read. Not hacked dramatically — just a reused password and no second factor.
What to do about it
- Put multi-factor authentication on email today. This is the single highest-value hour in this list. Business email compromise is the doorway to the biggest losses, and MFA closes most of it.
- Verify the carrier, not the paperwork. Call the number on the FMCSA record, not the number on the emailed rate confirmation. Fraudulent documents are cheap; a phone number you looked up independently is not.
- Watch for the tells in a booking. A brand-new authority on a high-value load, an email domain that is one character off, a request to change remittance details, pressure to skip a step for a "hot" load.
- Give drivers a script for pickup and delivery. Who releases the load, what ID is checked, and what to do when something feels wrong. Make "stop and call dispatch" an explicitly approved answer rather than something that gets a driver yelled at.
- Plan around long weekends. Do not let high-value freight sit in an unsecured yard over a holiday. Thieves plan their calendar around yours.
- Know your real cargo coverage. Limits, exclusions, and what your policy says about theft by deception — many policies treat fraud differently from burglary. Find out before the claim, not during it. Our piece on what moves your insurance premium covers how claims history follows you.
- Report fast. Recovery odds fall sharply after the first 24 hours. Have the police report, the load documents and the driver's account ready to go as one package.
Quick answers
Is cargo theft getting better or worse? Both. Incidents fell 26% year over year in Q2 2026, but losses more than doubled to $304.6 million, because thieves are targeting far more valuable loads.
What is strategic cargo theft? Theft by deception — fictitious pickups, double brokering, impersonating a legitimate carrier — rather than physically taking a trailer. It is where the biggest losses now come from.
What gets stolen most? In Q2 2026, metals (especially copper) and high-end technology. Food and beverage theft declined.
What is the cheapest thing I can do to reduce risk? Multi-factor authentication on email, and verifying carrier phone numbers independently rather than trusting emailed documents.
