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The trucking industry expects an uptick in cargo theft activity, related to peak shipping season, on top of already elevated conditions, experts warned.

Overhaul reported that cargo theft incidents saw an increase that coincided with the onset of the peak shipping season in August. The supply chain risk management and intelligence company added that the peak season typically brings heightened security risks anyway and that the results led the company to conclude that this trend will continue.

“So far, this has been a record-breaking year on all fronts for supply chain security and cargo thefts,” said Danny Ramon, director of intelligence and LE connect at Overhaul. “I expect to see that continue into the fourth quarter. I expect this is going to be a record-breaking fourth quarter for cargo thefts. I think we’re going to see a record number of strategic thefts committed as the supply chain shifts into overdrive.”

Ramon pointed out that security tends to lessen when the supply chain is moving too rapidly. He noted that it’s one of the corners that companies may cut to gain efficiencies when they’re trying to move goods off the docket and realize revenue.

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“One of the things that’s notable to me, in addition to the continued increases that we’re seeing, is how we’re seeing some of the trends start to shift,” Ramon said. “We’re starting to see a lot more activity in the middle of the week, and a lot of that activity is being driven by large-scale organized pilferage.”

Ramon added that pilferage-type thefts used to come from small operations, for instance people stealing off the back of a truck when it is parked. He noted it became a lucrative endeavor for some organized crews that reinvested into their operations. Ramon also has seen a lot of the seasonal trends shift or disappear with the increase in thefts generally.

“We’re starting to see a little uptick,” said Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at CargoNet. “A couple weeks ago, we took in 75 thefts just in one week. So that was an uptick for us. Of course, if that trend held, we’d be at almost 4,000 this year. We’ve seen an uptick this year, period, as far as thefts.”

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Lewis also views this activity as being related to holiday shipping. He also anticipates that criminals will continue to primarily focus on electronics.

Lewis encourages companies to ensure they are carefully vetting who they work with.

“It’s the lessons they learned from COVID, how easy it was to steal during the COVID time of working from home and virtual companies,” Lewis said. “It’s the lessons we learned from the supply chain securities lapses, if you will. We can take this to a higher level now and it’s become more of an international crime, more so than a domestic-type crime.”

Lewis noted that the organizations fighting cargo theft are playing catch-up with the bad guys because they’re always developing new techniques to steal freight. He noted that these criminals have been able to take advantage of the speed and efficiencies being built into the supply chain.

“I think it’ll be interesting to see what we see this year,” said Scott Cornell, transportation lead and crime and theft specialist at insurance firm Travelers. “In the past, we have always seen a fourth-quarter bump, and it’s always been associated with the holidays. It’s also had an impact on what’s stolen.”

Cornell has repeatedly said that cargo thefts have fundamentally changed in the past four or five years. He noted the industry used to have to mainly deal with small regional crews that mostly consisted of locals that knew each other. They primarily committed straight theft rather than more strategic thefts. That changed as criminal organizations became more sophisticated while growing into international operations.

“We’ve been seeing cargo theft jump up since the big increase between ’22 and ’23,” Cornell said. “We know 2024 is already projecting to be higher than 2023. In the strategic theft category, from the first quarter of 2021 until current date, we’ve seen almost a 1,500% increase in that specific category.”

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