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Trailer Theft & Cargo Theft Statistics (2026)

Last updated: July 2026. Figures on this page come from Verisk CargoNet, Overhaul, Travelers, and the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), and are reviewed and updated annually as new annual and quarterly reports publish.

25+ trailer theft and cargo theft statistics for 2026, every figure cited to its original source.

Cargo theft in the United States has broken its own record two years running. Verisk CargoNet's most recent full-year analysis puts estimated 2025 losses at roughly $725 million, a 60% jump over 2024, which was itself an all-time high. For carriers, brokers, and shippers, the trailer sitting in an unsecured drop lot is now one of the most targeted assets in the supply chain.

This page collects the trailer theft and cargo theft numbers that matter: the 2025 record year, the 2024 record that preceded it, where thefts concentrate geographically, the explosive growth of strategic and deception-based theft, what it all costs the supply chain, and what analysts project for 2026. Every statistic is cited to a named organization, primarily Verisk CargoNet, Overhaul, Travelers, and TIA. Where two organizations track the same problem with different methodologies, we keep their totals separate and say so.

This spoke goes deeper than the summary section in our full GPS tracking statistics roundup. If you manage trailers, intermodal equipment, or full truckload freight, these are the numbers to build your 2026 security budget around.

Was 2025 a Record Year for Cargo Theft?

Yes. CargoNet's annual analysis, published in January 2026, shows 2025 setting new highs for both confirmed theft volume and dollar losses. The striking part isn't just how many loads were stolen. It's how much more each stolen load was worth.

Estimated cargo theft losses reached roughly $725 million in 2025, up 60% over 2024. That's the largest annual loss figure CargoNet has published, and it reflects reported incidents only. Loads that go unreported to avoid insurance or customer fallout aren't in this number.
Source: Verisk CargoNet 2025 annual analysis, via Claims Journal (2026)

Confirmed cargo thefts rose 18% in 2025, from 2,243 to 2,646 incidents. Interestingly, total supply chain crime events stayed essentially flat at 3,594 (versus a revised 3,607 in 2024). The mix shifted: fewer miscellaneous events, more confirmed thefts of actual freight.
Source: Verisk CargoNet, via Claims Journal (2026)

The average value per cargo theft jumped 36% in 2025 to $273,990. Thieves aren't grabbing whatever's parked closest anymore. They're researching loads and targeting high-value freight, which is why losses grew 60% while incident counts grew only 18%.
Source: Verisk CargoNet, via Claims Journal (2026)

Food and beverage thefts climbed 47% in 2025, and metal theft rose 77%. The metal spike tracks with copper demand. Food and beverage loads attract thieves for a different reason: they're hard to trace, quick to sell, and the evidence literally gets eaten.
Source: Verisk CargoNet, via Claims Journal (2026)

Trailer-Specific Theft Counts

Most cargo theft reporting counts the freight, not the equipment. CargoNet's quarterly analyses are one of the few places trailer and tractor units get counted separately, and the trend line points the same direction as the freight numbers.

CargoNet reported 204 semi-trailers stolen in Q1 2025 alone, a 39% year-over-year increase. In the same quarter, CargoNet counted 135 stolen semi-tractors, up 38% from 112 a year earlier. When the trailer disappears with the load, the equipment loss stacks on top of the freight loss.
Source: Verisk CargoNet, Q1 2025 Theft Trends Analysis (2025)

Unattended trailers in drop yards and unsecured lots remain the classic target, which is why many fleets now run covert battery-powered trackers like the Lumina Stealth Trac inside the trailer body rather than relying on visible tractor-mounted telematics.

2024: The Record Year Before the Record Year

To understand how fast this problem is compounding, look at 2024. It was described at the time as the worst year on record for cargo theft. Twelve months later, 2025 made it look moderate.

CargoNet recorded 3,625 cargo theft incidents across the US and Canada in 2024, an all-time record and a 27% increase over 2023. That was the initially reported figure; CargoNet's later revised count for 2024 stands at 3,607 total supply chain crime events. Either way, 2024 shattered the previous high.
Source: Verisk CargoNet, via Heavy Duty Trucking (2025)

The average value per theft hit $202,364 in 2024, up from $187,895 in 2023. Even before 2025's surge to nearly $274,000 per incident, the per-load stakes were already climbing steadily. A single stolen trailer of electronics can erase the margin on hundreds of clean loads.
Source: Verisk CargoNet, via Heavy Duty Trucking (2025)

Total reported cargo theft losses reached $454.9 million in 2024. Analysts stress these are reported losses only; the true figure runs higher because many thefts never enter industry databases. That $454.9 million became the baseline that 2025's estimated $725 million blew past.
Source: Verisk CargoNet, via Burns & Wilcox (2025)

Cargo thefts rose 39% in Texas and 33% in California in 2024. The county-level numbers were sharper still: Dallas County up 78%, Los Angeles County up 50%, and San Bernardino County up 47%. These are the counties where the nation's biggest intermodal hubs and distribution corridors sit.
Source: Verisk CargoNet, via Heavy Duty Trucking (2025)

Related: Vehicle Theft Statistics

Where Does Trailer and Cargo Theft Happen?

Cargo theft is heavily concentrated, and the concentration is getting worse. Three states dominate, but within them, the hot spots migrate year to year as thieves respond to enforcement pressure. A corridor that cools off one year sends activity up the highway to the next logistics hub.

California, Texas, and Illinois together accounted for 46% of all cargo theft incidents in 2024. Those three states host the ports of LA/Long Beach and Houston plus the Chicago rail interchange, the three main gateways for US freight. Where freight concentrates, theft concentrates.
Source: CargoNet, via Burns & Wilcox (2025)

By 2025, California alone logged 1,218 cargo theft incidents, and CA, TX, and IL combined for roughly 52% of US cargo theft. The migration pattern inside California is the real story: Los Angeles County incidents fell 11%, while Kern County jumped 82% and San Joaquin County rose 44%. Pressure in LA pushed activity inland along Highway 99 and I-5.
Source: CargoNet, via Claims Journal (2026)

Overhaul's separate 2025 tracking found California accounted for 38% and Texas 20% of US cargo thefts, 58% combined. Overhaul monitors a different incident population than CargoNet, so its percentages shouldn't be merged with CargoNet's counts. But both datasets agree on the headline: two states carry the majority of US cargo theft risk.
Source: Overhaul, via FreightWaves (2026)

Jurisdiction	Period	Cargo Theft Trend (CargoNet)
Texas (statewide)	2024	+39%
California (statewide)	2024	+33%
Dallas County, TX	2024	+78%
Los Angeles County, CA	2024	+50%
San Bernardino County, CA	2024	+47%
Los Angeles County, CA	2025	−11%
Kern County, CA	2025	+82%
San Joaquin County, CA	2025	+44%
New Jersey	Q1 2026	+119% (59 incidents)

Source: Verisk CargoNet annual and quarterly analyses, via Heavy Duty Trucking, Claims Journal, and Truck News (2025-2026)

The takeaway for fleet managers: geography-based risk models go stale fast. A drop yard that was low-risk in 2024 may sit in a surging county by 2026, which argues for asset-level tracking rather than location-based assumptions alone.

How Fast Is Strategic and Deception-Based Theft Growing?

The fastest-growing category of cargo theft doesn't involve bolt cutters at all. Strategic theft, where criminals pose as legitimate carriers or brokers to get freight handed to them voluntarily, has gone from a niche tactic to a core industry threat in about three years.

Strategic cargo theft grew nearly 1,500% from 2022 to 2024. These are thefts by deception: fake carrier identities, fraudulent paperwork, and hijacked broker credentials. The freight is loaded willingly onto the thief's truck, and it's gone before anyone realizes the "carrier" never existed.
Source: Travelers, Strategic Cargo Theft (2024)

Fictitious pickups exploded from an average of 66 per year (2012-2022) to 576 events in 2023. That's nearly a nine-fold jump over the decade-long baseline in a single year. CargoNet also logged a 438% year-over-year spike in identity fraud complaints in 2023, the raw material for those fake pickups.
Source: CargoNet, via Travelers (2024)

Deceptive pickup incidents rose another 35% in 2025 and now account for 10% of recorded cargo theft events, per Overhaul. One in ten stolen loads is now handed over at the dock by the victim. No fence, camera, or padlock stops a theft that starts with a convincing email.
Source: Overhaul, via FreightWaves (2026)

TIA's fraud watchdog logged more than 1,600 fraud reports between September 2024 and February 2025, up 65%. In the same TIA survey, 22% of brokers reported losing over $200,000 to fraud in six months, 97% named truckload as the most fraud-prone segment, and 83% had been hit by three or more fraud types.
Source: TIA, State of Fraud in the Industry (2025)

Strategic theft is one reason independent trailer tracking matters. When a load leaves with a fraudulent carrier, a tracker traveling with the trailer or the freight is often the only data source the victim still controls.

What Does Cargo Theft Cost the Supply Chain?

Reported incident databases capture only part of the damage. Broader estimates that account for unreported thefts, fraud losses, and downstream disruption run far higher than the headline annual loss figures.

Cargo theft costs the US supply chain an estimated $3.5 billion to $10 billion annually. Travelers' range sits well above CargoNet's reported-loss totals because it accounts for the large share of thefts that never get reported to industry databases, plus downstream costs.
Source: Travelers, Strategic Cargo Theft (2024)

Double-brokering scams alone cause an estimated $500-700 million in freight losses per year. Travelers' Special Investigations Group has recovered more than $130 million in stolen cargo since 2009, a useful reminder that recovery is possible but represents a fraction of what's taken.
Source: Travelers, Strategic Cargo Theft (2024)

In July 2025 Senate Judiciary testimony, NICB cited industry cost figures running as high as $35 billion annually. That's a ceiling estimate that includes indirect and downstream costs, and it should be read as an upper bound. The more conservative Travelers range of $3.5-10 billion is the figure most analysts work from.
Source: NICB testimony, via TIA coverage (2025)

These costs land unevenly. A carrier that loses a trailer absorbs the equipment loss, the freight claim, the customer relationship damage, and the premium increase at renewal. Fleets that need visibility across mixed equipment types typically start with a GPS asset tracking program covering trailers, containers, and unpowered equipment.

What's the Cargo Theft Outlook for 2026?

Two data points frame 2026 so far: Overhaul's full-year projection and CargoNet's first-quarter numbers. They tell slightly different stories, which is normal given their different methodologies, but neither suggests the problem is going away.

Overhaul recorded 2,576 US cargo theft incidents in 2025, up 16% year over year, an average of 7.16 thefts per day versus 6.07 in 2024. Note that Overhaul's incident counts come from its own monitored population and shouldn't be compared directly against CargoNet's totals.
Source: Overhaul, via FreightWaves (2026)

Overhaul projects cargo thefts will rise another 13% in 2026, to roughly 2,910 incidents. If that projection holds, US cargo theft will have grown every year since 2022, with deception-based tactics taking a growing share of the total.
Source: Overhaul, via FreightWaves (2026)

Electronics were the most-stolen commodity in 2025 at 22% of recorded cargo thefts, per Overhaul. High value-to-weight ratio, instant resale demand, and easy anonymization make electronics loads the perennial favorite, and there's no sign of that changing in 2026.
Source: Overhaul, via FreightWaves (2026)

CargoNet counted 767 supply chain crime events in Q1 2026, down 5.3% year over year, but losses held at $131.58 million. The headline decline hides two warning signs: confirmed thefts actually rose by 41 within the flat total, and New Jersey incidents surged 119% to 59, suggesting the East Coast corridor is heating up.
Source: Verisk CargoNet Q1 2026 analysis, via Truck News (2026)

Read together, the Q1 2026 data and the 2026 projection point to the same operating assumption: plan for theft pressure at or above 2025 levels, with hot spots shifting toward inland California counties and the Northeast.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much cargo was stolen in 2025?

Estimated cargo theft losses reached roughly $725 million in 2025, up 60% over 2024, according to Verisk CargoNet's annual analysis. Confirmed thefts rose 18% to 2,646 incidents, and the average value per theft jumped 36% to $273,990. It was the second consecutive record-breaking year.

Which states have the most cargo theft?

California, Texas, and Illinois. Together they accounted for roughly 52% of US cargo theft in 2025, per CargoNet, with California alone logging 1,218 incidents. Overhaul's separate tracking put California at 38% and Texas at 20% of 2025 thefts. Hot spots are shifting inland: Kern County, CA rose 82% in 2025 while Los Angeles County fell 11%.

How many trailers are stolen each year?

There's no single verified annual trailer count, but CargoNet reported 204 semi-trailers stolen in Q1 2025 alone, up 39% year over year, alongside 135 stolen semi-tractors (up 38%). Trailer equipment losses stack on top of freight losses, which averaged $273,990 per cargo theft in 2025 per CargoNet.

What is strategic cargo theft?

Strategic theft uses deception instead of force: fake carrier identities, fraudulent pickups, and hijacked broker credentials get freight handed over voluntarily. Travelers reports it grew nearly 1,500% from 2022 to 2024, and CargoNet data show fictitious pickups jumped from a 66-per-year average (2012-2022) to 576 events in 2023.

How much does cargo theft cost the supply chain annually?

Travelers estimates $3.5 billion to $10 billion per year for the US supply chain, well above CargoNet's reported-loss totals ($454.9 million in 2024, ~$725 million in 2025) because most thefts go unreported. NICB testimony has cited ceiling figures as high as $35 billion when indirect costs are included.

Will cargo theft keep rising in 2026?

Overhaul projects a further 13% increase in 2026, to roughly 2,910 incidents. CargoNet's Q1 2026 count dipped 5.3% overall, but confirmed thefts still rose by 41 within that total and New Jersey surged 119%, so most analysts advise planning for theft pressure at or above 2025 levels.

Sources & Methodology

Every statistic on this page was verified against its original publisher or a tier-1 industry outlet quoting the original report, as of July 2026. Where CargoNet and Overhaul both report on the same year, their figures are presented separately because the two organizations track different incident populations with different methodologies; their totals are never combined. CargoNet's 2024 count is presented with both its initial (3,625) and revised (3,607) figures noted. This page is reviewed and updated annually as new annual and quarterly data publish.