From small quantities of pilfered goods to entire missing shipments, cargo theft causes significant losses to suppliers while leaving customers without the items they need. Once a crime that could simply be countered through robust physical security, cargo theft is now a complex criminal industry requiring a multifaceted prevention approach.
What Is Cargo Theft?
Cargo theft occurs when someone steals goods, money, or other assets from a commercial shipment. While some criminals commit cargo theft by simply breaking into a location containing stored cargo, others use sophisticated tactics to cheat companies out of their goods.
Businesses can experience cargo theft at any point during the transportation process. Common locations for cargo theft include storage facilities, shipping hubs, and vehicles used in transporting goods. Understanding current trends in these types of crimes and the methods criminals use to steal assets can help you design stronger systems that prevent cargo theft.
Cargo Theft Trends
Often, business owners imagine cargo theft as an opportunistic crime—in other words, they picture a crew of criminals spotting the chance to steal freight and making off with as many pallets as they can carry. Instead of using force to steal assets, criminal gangs increasingly employ deceptive techniques, such as impersonation and fake papers, to hoodwink businesses into handing over their goods.
Unfortunately, these complex theft techniques have proven highly successful for the thieves who employ them. Cargo theft increased by 27% in 2024, totaling $454 million in losses for American businesses.
Common Cargo Theft Tactics
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recognizes four main types of supply chain cargo theft. Below, we outline the most common cargo theft tactics and how they can impact your business.
Straight Cargo Theft
Straight cargo theft likely springs to mind when you imagine someone stealing your company's goods. This type of cargo theft simply involves breaking into places containing goods and stealing items to sell. It often happens in parking lots, railyards, and other locations where a driver or another worker may leave goods unsupervised. Sometimes, criminals steal entire vehicles laden with goods. As we've already mentioned, straight cargo theft is becoming less common as thieves turn to lower-risk methods.
Strategic Cargo Theft
Strategic cargo theft is relatively common and involves identifying and exploiting a weakness in the supply chain. For example, a criminal may pose as a legitimate shipper, create a fictitious brokerage, or use other fraudulent techniques to gain the trust of their targets. This type of cargo theft enables thieves to illegally obtain large quantities of goods without the risk of physically breaking into a storage facility or vehicle.
Pilferage Cargo Theft
Pilferage cargo theft occurs when criminals steal small amounts of cargo from a vehicle. Often, they fraudulently edit the bill of lading to make the theft more difficult to detect. While criminals risk discovery while pilfering goods, the crime can be difficult to identify and prosecute because shippers often struggle to identify the point at which the goods disappeared after the fact. For this reason, cargo theft statistics may underestimate the true scale of pilferage operations.
Cyber Cargo Theft
Cyber cargo theft is a relatively recent form of theft involving sophisticated cyberattacks. During a cyber theft, criminals typically infect a company's computer system with malware via phishing emails. They then use this malware to access genuine shipping documents, enabling them to pose as legitimate shippers and gain access to entire shipments.
Cargo Theft Prevention Tips
Cargo theft can affect any company, regardless of size or industry, and significantly impact its bottom line. However, you can take steps to improve the security of your shipments and identify potential theft before it occurs. The following theft prevention tips for cargo can help protect your business:
- Ensure goods remain supervised throughout the shipping process to reduce the chance of opportunistic cargo theft.
- Familiarize yourself with cargo theft hot spots along your regular routes, and put extra security in place in these locations.
- Install high-quality doors, air cuffs, and landing gear locks in every vehicle.
- Verify the identity of anyone claiming to be a shipper, and thoroughly check truck and trailer identifiers.
- Cross-reference contact information against official sources whenever you receive communication from a shipper or broker to ensure it's genuine.
Preventing cyber cargo theft can be challenging without a detailed understanding of the complex techniques thieves use to gain access to your online systems. Joining an association that works to safeguard the interests of motor carriers, such as the National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc., can help you learn to spot the red flags associated with cyber cargo theft and identify and address weaknesses in your cyber systems.
The NMFTA Cybersecurity Cargo Crime Reduction Framework provides the information you need to prevent and address cybercrime, even if you have no prior knowledge of cybersecurity. Our framework teaches business leaders to recognize the signs of fraudulent activity, improve your company's defenses, and respond effectively to maximize the chance of recovery when theft happens. Download the framework today to start boosting your cargo theft security.
