Cargo thieves took an estimated 725 million dollars in freight across the United States in 2025, an average of 273,990 dollars per theft. Then the pattern shifted. In the second quarter of 2026, reported thefts fell 26 percent from a year earlier, and losses more than doubled to 304.6 million dollars. The average theft that quarter was worth about 564,000 dollars.
Fewer thefts, bigger losses. That gap is the whole story. The crews working freight today are not grabbing whatever trailer is unlocked. They are choosing the load before it leaves the dock.
What changed: the load gets chosen in advance
Verisk CargoNet counted 2,646 cargo thefts in 2025, up 18 percent, while dollar losses rose 60 percent. By the second quarter of 2026, the count was down to 677 for the quarter and the value per theft kept climbing. Metal thefts rose from 54 to 80 events in that quarter, with copper the most targeted, alongside enterprise computing and crypto mining hardware.
Targeting that precise takes information: what the load is, when it moves, and who is hauling it. Increasingly, that information comes from inside the shipping process itself.
The weak point moved into the office
CargoNet named business email compromise as the main way into its most sophisticated theft schemes in the second quarter of 2026. In its September 2026 holiday-period report, it described criminals taking over carrier logins, phone systems and compliance platforms, then changing delivery instructions after the legitimate driver had already picked up the load.
That second scheme is the one to sit with. The right truck shows up, the right driver signs for the freight, and the load still disappears, because someone with a stolen password told the driver to take it somewhere else. No padlock stops that.
The older version has not gone away either. CargoNet recorded 158 fictitious pickups in the second quarter of 2026: a fake carrier, or a real carrier's identity, presenting itself at the dock and driving off with freight it was never assigned.
What this means in Texas and the Valley
Texas ranked second in the nation for cargo thefts around the Labor Day holiday period from 2021 to 2025, with 38 incidents to California's 70. Holiday weekends matter because loaded trailers sit longer and fewer people are watching them. To be fair to the state, CargoNet listed Texas among the places where reported thefts fell in the second quarter of 2026. Fewer incidents is not the same as lower exposure when each one costs more.
The Valley adds a layer most of the country does not have. Cross-border freight changes hands at least once, from a Mexican carrier to a U.S. carrier, often with a stop in a yard in between. The Pharr International Bridge alone handles roughly 4,000 commercial trucks a day. Every handoff is a moment when paperwork, identity and custody can be faked.
The Mexico side carries its own risk. Mexico logged 2,099 cargo theft investigations from January through May 2026, down 21 percent from the same months of 2025, but close to 13,000 violent robberies in the same window, and at least 14 truck drivers killed so far in 2026. For any fleet with Mexican interline partners, driver safety on the southern leg is a separate conversation from cargo security, and it deserves one.
What actually stops it
- Verify every pickup against a record you already hold. Check the carrier's DOT number in FMCSA's SAFER system, call back on a phone number you had before this load, not one from the email, and match the driver, tractor and trailer to what was booked. If anything does not match, the freight waits.
- Lock the accounts that move freight. Turn on multi-factor login for email, load boards, dispatch software and your telematics and ELD portals. Then make one rule: any change to a delivery address or appointment gets confirmed by a phone call to a contact you already know.
- Do not let loaded trailers sit unwatched. Weekends and holidays are when trailers wait longest. Plan high-value loads so they move, or park them somewhere lit, fenced and watched.
- Track the trailer, not just the truck. A tracker on the trailer reports even when it is unhooked. Set geofence alerts for yard exits and for stops that are not on the route.
- Write it down. Keep a pickup log: who verified the carrier, how, and when. When a theft does happen, that log is what your insurer and the police ask for first.
What tracking can and cannot do
A tracker will not stop a convincing fake pickup at the dock. That job belongs to the verification steps above. What tracking does is shorten the time between a load going wrong and someone noticing, and in theft recovery, hours matter. It also gives you a timestamped record of where the freight went, which turns an argument with an insurer into a file.
The best protection is boring: one verification habit at the dock, one rule about changed instructions, and a trailer you can see on a screen. None of it requires a large fleet.
Sources: Verisk CargoNet 2025 annual cargo theft data; Verisk CargoNet second quarter 2026 report (August 6, 2026); Verisk CargoNet Labor Day cargo theft report (September 4, 2026), as reported by FreightWaves; FreightWaves reporting on Mexico's national crime statistics and the CANACAR trucking chamber (2026); Pharr International Bridge. Figures reflect the record as of the last-updated date above.
Want loads you can see after they leave the yard? PFI sets up trailer tracking, geofence alerts and the pickup checks that catch a fake carrier before the freight moves. Based in Hidalgo, working the whole Valley. Call 956-420-7676 or email [email protected]. A real person answers.