A truck leaves a warehouse with a full load. A driver is expected at the next stop. Then someone notices the shipment is headed the wrong way.
At another yard, a loaded trailer sits overnight. By morning, the trailer is gone.
These are two different ways a business can lose freight. And the latest cargo-theft reports show why warehouse and yard operators need to think about both.
In 2025, the number of supply-chain crime events reported to Verisk CargoNet hardly changed, but confirmed cargo thefts and estimated losses went up. In the second quarter of 2026, CargoNet reported fewer incidents than a year earlier, yet the estimated value of stolen cargo more than doubled.
We reviewed CargoNet’s annual and quarterly reports, the FBI’s cargo-theft guidance, another specialist dataset from Overhaul, and two reported Texas investigations. Our goal is simple: show what the numbers actually say, where they come from, and what a warehouse or freight yard can learn from them.
The main findings
- 2025: CargoNet recorded 3,594 supply-chain crime events, compared with 3,607 in 2024. But confirmed cargo thefts rose from 2,243 to 2,646. CargoNet annual report.
- 2025 loss value: CargoNet estimated losses at nearly $725 million, up 60% from 2024. Its average value per reported theft rose to $273,990, up from $202,364. This is not the cost of an average theft at every warehouse.
- April–June 2026: CargoNet recorded 677 supply-chain theft incidents, down 26% from the same quarter in 2025. But estimated losses rose from $135.7 million to $304.6 million. CargoNet Q2 2026.
- Where freight was exposed: In Overhaul’s U.S. Q2 2026 reporting, warehouses and distribution centers accounted for 37% of theft reports with a known location. This is a share of Overhaul’s reported cases, not the chance of theft at any given warehouse. Overhaul report page.
- Two different problems: Physical security helps with unauthorized access and activity in a yard. But a fake carrier pickup may look like an ordinary delivery unless someone checks the driver’s identity and the shipment instructions. FBI cargo theft guidance.
1. What counts as cargo theft?
Cargo is the goods moving from one business to another. It might be food, copper, electronics, auto parts, clothes, or a mixed load of products.
The FBI explains that cargo theft can happen while goods are in a truck or trailer, at a rail site, or while they are being stored in a warehouse or freight facility. It is not limited to someone breaking into a parked truck.
There are a few common forms:
CASE 01
Direct theft
What happens
What happens
CASE 02
Partial-load theft
What happens
What happens
CASE 03
Fake pickup
What happens
Someone pretending to represent an approved carrier collects a load.
What happens
The gate may open normally; the real problem is the pickup approval.
CASE 04
Shipment diversion
What happens
A load is sent somewhere other than its agreed destination through a false or changed instruction.
What happens
Dispatch and receiving teams must confirm changes through trusted contacts.
The FBI calls some of these straight cargo theft and others strategic cargo theft. We use the simpler descriptions above because buyers need to know what can go wrong, not memorize labels.
2. What changed between 2024 and 2025?
Start with CargoNet’s full-year figures.
| CargoNet measure | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
Supply-chain crime events |
3,607 | 3,594 | −0.4% (calculated)[cite: 18] |
Confirmed cargo thefts |
2,243 | 2,646 | +18% (publisher-rounded)[cite: 18] |
Estimated cargo losses |
Not stated here as an exact amount | Nearly $725 million | +60% (publisher-reported)[cite: 18] |
Average reported theft value |
$202,364 | $273,990 | +36% (publisher-rounded)[cite: 18] |
This table tells a story that a single headline would miss.
If you looked only at all recorded supply-chain events, 2025 might seem almost the same as 2024. The total was lower by just 13 events.
But the confirmed-theft count went up by 403. CargoNet also reported a much larger value of goods lost.
Those two things can happen at the same time because the broad event count also covers other supply-chain crime reports, while confirmed thefts are a narrower group. CargoNet said thieves were increasingly selecting high-value loads.
One measure stayed nearly flat. Confirmed theft rose.
Change from 2024 to 2025, using CargoNet's reported U.S. + Canada figures. A dot left of zero means a decrease; a dot right of zero means an increase. The horizontal axis is percent change, not number of thefts.
What this means for a business: A change in the total number of incidents is only part of the picture. A warehouse moving valuable goods should also ask about the value of its loads, how often they are left unattended, and whether pickups can be checked.
3. The 2026 numbers: Fewer reports, much larger losses in Q2
As of this research review, the latest CargoNet quarterly release we could verify is for April–June 2026, published August 6, 2026. It is not the result for all of 2026.
The two quarterly releases show different patterns:
| CargoNet reporting period | Supply-chain events or incidents | Estimated loss value | Important note |
|---|---|---|---|
Jan–Mar 2026 |
767 | $131.58 million | Down 5.3% in events from Q1 2025; CargoNet listed 596 confirmed theft reports. |
Apr–Jun 2026 |
677 | $304.6 million | Down 26% in incidents from Q2 2025; estimated loss value more than doubled. |
Apr–Jun 2025 comparison |
Not stated as an exact total in the 2026 release | $135.7 million | Comparable same-quarter loss figure published by CargoNet in August 2026. |
In the second quarter, CargoNet counted fewer incidents than one year earlier. The loss estimate, however, rose by $168.9 million.
That difference comes directly from subtracting $135.7 million from $304.6 million. Because both source values are rounded, the calculated difference is also approximate.
How estimated Q2 losses grew from $135.7M to $304.6M
A waterfall chart shows a starting value, the added amount, and the ending value. CargoNet loss estimates for April–June in each year; US$ millions, U.S. and Canada[cite: 17].
There is another number to treat carefully. CargoNet said the average value among thefts with a reported commodity value reached $564,009 in Q2 2026. It warned that a small number of very large thefts pushed that figure up.
That is not the average cost of every supply-chain event, and it is not what a normal warehouse should expect to lose.
Averages can move sharply when a few stolen loads are worth several million dollars.
Did every kind of theft fall?
No. CargoNet’s Q2 report split out some event types. It counted 488 events classified as theft in Q2 2025 and 378 in Q2 2026. Reports of fictitious pickups changed much less, from 165 to 158.
Those are two separate classifications within CargoNet’s system. They are useful for showing that not every method changed at the same pace. They should not be added to the broad incident total without checking the source definitions.
4. What goods were being targeted?
There is no single item that thieves always want. But CargoNet’s reports point to changes in what showed up most often.
In 2025, the company recorded 708 food-and-beverage thefts, a 47% increase from 2024. It also reported that metal theft rose 77%. Copper was one of the important reasons for that increase.
During Q2 2026, CargoNet counted 80 metal-theft events, compared with 54 in Q2 2025. That is 26 more reports, or roughly 48% higher using those two published counts. CargoNet also reported continued interest in computer and network equipment used by businesses, including parts for large computer systems.
These are reported theft patterns, not a ranking of which types of goods have the highest chance of being stolen. A company moving more food than computer equipment may naturally have more food-related claims.
What matters to the buyer is the value and movement of their own inventory.
A small box of high-value computer parts may create a very different loss than a large pallet of low-cost goods. Both need care, but they may need different checks.
5. Where do reported cargo thefts happen?
It is tempting to picture cargo theft as a truck disappearing from a highway stop. That does happen, but freight can also go missing before it ever leaves a warehouse.
A separate cargo-security firm, Overhaul, studies U.S. theft reports using its own data. In its Q2 2026 U.S. report, warehouses and distribution centers were the most common location among cases where a location was identified.
Where reported thefts with a known location occurred
Overhaul U.S., Q2 2026 only[cite: 18]. Each square represents about one percentage point of reports where the location was identified[cite: 18]. This is not the chance that a warehouse will have a theft[cite: 18].
The waffle chart includes three location shares from the report. The pale squares are the approximate share of other known-location types, calculated by subtraction. It does not include cases with no reported location.
Also, 37% does not mean 37% of all warehouses had a theft. It means 37% of Overhaul’s reports with a known location were tied to warehouses or distribution centers. Overhaul recorded 605 U.S. incidents that quarter; its database, definitions, and geography differ from CargoNet’s.
For operators, the next step is local. Think about where loaded trucks wait, where drivers check in, where the trailer doors face, and what happens when an arrival time changes. Those are questions to review at your own site—not claims about where a thief will strike.
6. Texas: An important market, but not a separate national total
Texas has large freight corridors, warehouses, truck yards, and distribution centers. It is also among the states that appear often in specialist cargo-theft reports.
CargoNet’s Q1 2026 release gives one matched year-over-year Texas comparison: 80 reported incidents in Q1 2026 versus 102 in Q1 2025, a decline of about 22%.
Those counts come from CargoNet’s comparison using similar reporting cutoffs. They are not the total number of cargo thefts reported to all Texas police agencies.
And they do not tell us how many thefts happened at Houston warehouses, Dallas truck stops, or any single industrial property.
CargoNet also noted fewer organized thefts of unattended loaded equipment around Dallas–Fort Worth in Q2 2026. That is an observation from its own records, not proof that every yard in the region became safer.
For a business with several properties, this is where the broad research ends and the local review begins. One yard may have a full gate team and cameras. Another may have trucks arriving after hours with nobody checking release requests. The risk is not the same.
7. Two Texas copper shipments show how losses can happen
Statistics are useful, but it helps to see what an actual case looked like. These two cases were documented publicly. They are examples, not a sample that represents all cargo thefts.
January 2025: A copper load was intercepted in West Texas
On January 24, 2025, Pecos County authorities stopped a truck carrying a load of copper reported stolen from Houston. The original report described the cargo as worth about $200,000.
According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s account of the investigation, the truck had been sent away from its planned Texas destination. Authorities recovered the copper. The report later described its value as about $175,000.
Those are two estimates from the public account, not proof of a final loss of either amount. The goods were recovered.
The lesson for a warehouse is not that theft always starts at a broken gate. A change in destination or an unauthorized pickup can matter just as much.
March 2026: Police recovered a roughly $240,000 copper shipment
On March 23, 2026, Wichita Falls police responded to a suspected cargo theft involving a copper shipment valued at roughly $240,000.
Local broadcaster KAUZ reported that police learned an unauthorized company had picked up the load and that the vehicle was traveling away from its planned destination. Officers recovered the cargo and arrested a driver.
This is a police-reported investigation. An arrest is not a conviction. The $240,000 was the reported shipment value, not a confirmed permanent loss after recovery.
These two cases share a useful point: someone needed to spot that a load or pickup did not match the original plan, then contact the right people. A yard camera by itself cannot verify whether the paperwork and dispatch instructions are real.
8. The two problems a warehouse must solve
The evidence points to two separate security jobs.
Job one: Know what is happening at the property. That means being able to see activity around gates, parked trailers, loading docks, and other approved areas. It may involve lights, locks, cameras, an on-site team, and a clear plan for checking alarms.
Job two: Know who is allowed to take the freight. That means checking the carrier, driver, truck, trailer, pickup number, and any change of delivery instructions through trusted contacts.
The FBI warned in April 2026 that criminals were using stolen business accounts and false messages to pose as trusted trucking companies and redirect shipments. Its advice makes clear that a proper identity check must continue from booking through pickup and delivery, not end when a carrier is first approved.
A warehouse that invests only in the fence may still release a load to the wrong party. A warehouse with good paperwork may still lose an unattended trailer overnight.
The strongest plan covers both problems.
9. A practical security review for warehouse and yard managers
Here is a short review that can be done with operations, dispatch, security, and the people responsible for loaded trailers.
Before pickup
Has the carrier and driver been checked using a trusted number or system, not only details in a new email?
Owner: Dispatch / shipping
At the gate
Do the driver, truck, trailer, and load details match the approved pickup?
Owner: Gate team / shipping
At the dock
Is the shipment recorded as released, with the right time and destination?
Owner: Warehouse operations
After a change
Who can approve a new pickup time or destination, and how is that approval checked?
Owner: Load owner / dispatch
During parking
Are loaded trailers placed in areas that can be checked when staff are away?
Owner: Yard management / security
When an alert arrives
Who confirms what happened, who gets called, and what is the response plan?
Owner: Security / operations
These are good questions to ask, not measured guarantees. They follow the general concerns raised in the FBI cargo-theft guidance and 2026 FBI/IC3 warning.
Start with the handoffs that happen every day. A load might pass from warehouse staff to a driver, from dispatch to a third-party carrier, and from one location to another. Each handoff should have a clear owner.
10. Where live remote monitoring helps—and where it doesn't
For warehouses, industrial properties, and truck yards, cameras can help record activity and show what is happening when staff are not on-site. If a service includes live remote monitoring, trained operators can review certain alerts and follow the agreed response steps.
That can be useful for unattended trailers, yard entrances, and after-hours movement, depending on the camera coverage and what the system can actually detect.
But video monitoring is not the same as checking a carrier’s business identity, fixing a false shipping instruction, or securing a trucking company’s email accounts.
These tasks belong to different teams. Operations and IT still need to control who can change a shipment or send a driver.
GuardVision offers commercial live remote video monitoring across the United States. For sites in Texas, GuardVision also rents and sells mobile security camera trailers. A trailer can add coverage where permanent cameras are not ready, but it is not a replacement for pickup verification.
Nothing in CargoNet’s or Overhaul’s reports measures how much GuardVision’s service prevents theft. We have not used any GuardVision client outcome data here.
11. What these numbers do not tell us
Before a business uses these figures in a budget meeting, there are a few important limits.
CargoNet does not record every theft. Its numbers come from cases reported to its network. Not every stolen load or missing pallet will appear there.
The geography matters. CargoNet’s annual and quarterly figures cover the United States and Canada. Overhaul’s Q2 2026 location figures cover reported U.S. cases in a different dataset. We do not add their counts together.
An event is not always a confirmed theft. The number of broad supply-chain events is different from the number of confirmed stolen loads. The figures need their original labels.
The average loss is not every site’s average. CargoNet’s Q2 2026 $564,009 average applies to thefts with a reported commodity value. Very large losses can pull that number up.
This is not a measured theft rate per warehouse. To work out a rate, we would need to know how many warehouses or shipments were covered by a study and how many thefts occurred among them.
2026 is still a partial year in this draft. We use Q1 and Q2 reports available by November 3, 2026. We do not invent a 2026 year-end total or assume the first-half pattern continued.
Finally, we cannot prove that a camera, guard, or pickup rule reduced theft using these trend reports alone. That would need a different kind of study.
The bottom line
Cargo theft in 2025 and 2026 is not one simple story.
The 2025 CargoNet reports show that broad event totals can stay almost flat while confirmed thefts and reported loss values rise. The early 2026 reports show that lower incident counts can still come with very expensive losses.
For a warehouse or yard, this means looking at more than how many incidents happened in the country or state.
Look at which loads carry the most value. Look at how long trailers stay parked. Check who approves pickups, who can change a destination, and who will act when something looks wrong.
And don’t assume that a locked gate solves a false pickup—or that a clean pickup form protects a trailer after everyone goes home.
Frequently asked questions
How many cargo thefts were reported in 2025?
Verisk CargoNet recorded 2,646 confirmed cargo thefts in 2025, compared with 2,243 in 2024. It also recorded 3,594 broader supply-chain crime events. The data covers reports across the United States and Canada, not every theft in either country.
How much money was lost to cargo theft in 2025?
CargoNet estimated nearly $725 million in reported cargo losses in 2025, up 60% from 2024. This is a figure from CargoNet’s reporting network, not a complete estimate of all business losses.
Did cargo theft get better or worse in 2026?
The answer depends on which measure you mean. In Q2 2026, CargoNet incidents were 26% lower than Q2 2025, but estimated losses rose from $135.7 million to $304.6 million. This article does not claim a full-year 2026 result.
Are warehouses the most common place for cargo theft?
In Overhaul’s U.S. Q2 2026 data, warehouses and distribution centers accounted for 37% of the thefts where a location was identified, the highest of the listed location types. That is a finding from one reporting dataset, not a risk rate for all warehouses.
What is a fake carrier pickup?
It is when someone pretending to be an approved carrier collects freight without proper permission. The FBI advises businesses to check driver and carrier details through trusted systems and verify changes in shipping instructions.
Does cargo theft always involve stealing a truck?
No. Theft can involve a full trailer, part of a load, goods taken from storage, or freight released to a dishonest party through false pickup information.
Can remote monitoring stop cargo theft?
Remote monitoring may help staff or operators notice and respond to certain activity at a property. It cannot, by itself, verify shipment ownership or prevent every false pickup. These reports do not provide a measured theft-prevention rate for any specific monitoring service.
How we did this research
Type: Public-source evidence review and original comparison. This is not a GuardVision customer case study or first-party incident analysis.
Observation years: CargoNet full-year 2024 and 2025, CargoNet first and second quarters of 2026, Overhaul second quarter of 2026, and documented incidents from January 2025 and March 2026.
Source release dates: CargoNet 2025 annual report January 21, 2026; CargoNet Q1 report April 23, 2026; CargoNet Q2 report August 6, 2026; Overhaul U.S. Q2 2026 report page, August 2026. FBI/IC3 public notice April 30, 2026.
Geography: CargoNet reports cover the United States and Canada. Overhaul’s location sample is U.S.-focused. The two recovery examples occurred in Texas.
Reported counts: CargoNet’s network of reported cases, not a police census of all thefts; Overhaul’s separate reported cases, not merged with CargoNet. The exact number of warehouses or shipments covered is not available in the public material used here.
Calculations: The annual event change is (3,594 − 3,607) ÷ 3,607, or approximately −0.4%. The change in confirmed thefts is 2,646 − 2,243 = 403, or about 18%. The Q2 loss difference is $304.6 million − $135.7 million = $168.9 million, based on rounded source figures. The metal-theft change is (80 − 54) ÷ 54 = about 48%.
Reporting lags: CargoNet’s annual comparison used 2025 records updated through January 12, 2026 and 2024 records through January 12, 2025. CargoNet’s quarterly comparisons use matching delayed-report cutoffs described in their source releases. These details matter when figures change after the first publication.
What we did not do: We did not calculate a national theft rate, assume all cargo losses were permanent, use GuardVision client figures, estimate theft prevention, or merge unlike datasets.
Research checked: November 3, 2026. Planned publication: January 13, 2027 at 10 a.m. U.S. Central, subject to a fresh source check and editorial approval.
Sources and references
- Verisk CargoNet, 2025 Annual Supply Chain Risk Trends, January 21, 2026.
- Verisk CargoNet, Q1 2026 Supply Chain Risk Trends, April 23, 2026.
- Verisk CargoNet, Q2 2026 Cargo Theft and Loss Trends, August 6, 2026.
- Overhaul, U.S. Q2 2026 Cargo Theft Report, with location breakdown reported in FreightWaves, August 28, 2026. The Overhaul sample is not CargoNet’s sample.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cargo Theft: Definitions and Prevention.
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, Cyber-Enabled Strategic Cargo Theft Surging, April 30, 2026.
- National Insurance Crime Bureau, Copper Load Intercepted in West Texas, January 2025.
- KAUZ / News Channel 6, Wichita Falls Police Recover Copper Shipment, March 24, 2026.
Review your warehouse or yard security plan
Cargo theft can start at the gate, in a parked trailer, or with a false instruction sent before the truck even arrives. For commercial locations across the United States, GuardVision offers live remote video monitoring that can support an agreed site-response plan. Pickup checks and freight approvals must still be managed by your operations team.
