The problem
Freight is being stolen with paperwork, not bolt cutters.
Between 2022 and 2024, cargo theft of every kind rose 93 percent. One kind rose 1,475 percent: strategic theft, where a criminal poses as a real carrier, passes the broker’s checks, and is handed the load. Both numbers are drawn to the same scale on the right.
The tall column is the one that comes through a carrier packet.
Every kind, force included
A criminal is handed the load
What it costs, and how it is done
Four numbers, each from the body that published it.
The total
Cargo theft losses across the US and Canada reached nearly $725 million in 2025, up 60 percent on the year before.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
Per load
The average loss per incident is now $273,990, up 36 percent. One load is a bad quarter for a mid-sized brokerage.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
The method
86 percent of brokers who were defrauded say it was double brokering: the load was given to someone who then gave it to someone else.
Truckstop, 2025 broker survey
The trend
Impersonating a real carrier is now “a systematic and scalable criminal method.” It is a business with a process, not a lucky hit.
CargoNet, Q1 2026 report
How the load disappears
- Criminals steal a real carrier’s identity, pass the broker’s vetting and take the load.
- They then pose as a broker and hire an unsuspecting carrier to actually haul it.
- The broker finds out when the shipper calls.
Every step passes a normal packet check, because most of the packet is real. The parts that are not real are the ones a dispatcher under time pressure does not look up: who changed the phone number, and when.
What the agent does about it
Below is a vetting queue with eight packets in it, the way it looks after a dispatcher posts a load. Five are fine. Three should not be tendered, and none of the three looks wrong at a glance. The agent works through each packet in five steps and ends with a verdict you can forward to the shipper. It plays through one on its own; tap any packet to run it, and tap any step to see what was checked.
Watch the agent vet a packetGulf Coast Freight vetting queue
Wednesday, September 17, 2026 · 8 packets · 8 loads posted
Eight packets in the queue. Tap any one to vet it.
Each packet runs the same five steps. Flagged packets get a heavier mark.
This console runs on eight sample packets built from the patterns above. Wiring it to live FMCSA data, the insurance filings and Gulf Coast Freight’s own load history is the next step.
If you want to see it read your packets, reply to the email this came from.