As of October 11, 2025, industry leaders warn that the U.S. cargo theft crisis isn’t just growing in scale — it’s being masked by cases that never make it to police blotters or claim files. Carriers and shippers told FreightWaves that fear of premium hikes and tougher renewals is a powerful deterrent to filing claims, creating blind spots that make it harder for insurers to price risk and for law enforcement to see patterns early. The result is a feedback loop: less reporting leads to fuzzier risk signals, which in turn sustains high loss costs for everyone who moves freight.
Fresh data out this week underscores the stakes. New research from the American Transportation Research Institute pegs cargo theft’s total cost at roughly $6.6 billion annually — more than $18 million a day when direct and indirect losses are counted. The study, drawn from motor carriers, logistics providers and insurers, finds the burden is felt across the chain: a typical carrier absorbed about $520,000 in annual theft losses, while a logistics service provider’s average topped $1.84 million. ATRI pairs those figures with a policy ask: model state penalties for cargo theft, and a federated, centralized reporting mechanism to improve case visibility and response.
Evidence of underreporting is no longer anecdotal. A Commercial Carrier Journal review of ATRI’s findings reports that just over 80% of motor carriers say they always report theft to law enforcement — meaning nearly one in five do not report every incident, and almost 9% never report at all. Carriers that opted not to report most often cited the low dollar value of a loss or the low probability of resolution relative to investigation effort. At the same time, recoveries remain rare: respondents said nearly three-quarters of stolen loads are never recovered.
For insurance markets already digesting higher severity and rising claim costs, thin theft visibility can muddy loss trends and prolong a hard pricing cycle. Motor carriers’ caution about filing claims may be rational in the short run — especially when losses fall under deductibles or when they worry about future rate action — but the longer-term effect is that actuarial models see less of the problem even as organized rings grow bolder and more digital. That disconnect shows up on the ground: Transport Topics’ coverage of the new study notes theft clustering around major freight hubs, while pointing to a 74% non-recovery rate — a figure that helps explain why many fleets now treat cargo theft as a recurring operating cost rather than a one-off shock.
The policy conversation is accelerating in parallel. In Washington and across industry groups, support is building for a stronger federal playbook. A high-profile op-ed this week urged passage of the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, which would stand up a national task force and enable better data-sharing to track sophisticated theft schemes — the kind that increasingly rely on identity fraud, fake paperwork and GPS manipulation rather than bolt cutters. While the bill is framed around retail crime, its information-sharing and coordination mandates would directly touch cargo crime that begins on docks, rail ramps and truck yards.
What it means for fleets and brokers: first, pricing pressure tied to theft isn’t going away simply because freight markets are soft. If more losses remain off the books, insurers will continue to lean on blunt tools — rate, retention and capacity limits — rather than the finer-grained pricing that better data would allow. Second, shippers are becoming more attuned to who actually controls pickup and routing decisions in the “last mile before the first mile,” where many strategic thefts originate. ATRI’s recommendations map cleanly to this reality: invest in site security, tighten access control, standardize verification at pickup, and align operating policies to reduce weekend dwell and unauthorized stops. Those operational shifts don’t just deter thieves — they also create cleaner evidence trails when claims do need to be filed.
The bottom line for trucking: underreporting may look like a short-term hedge against premium pain, but it’s helping to keep the whole market in a fog. The latest research quantifies what carriers live every day — high losses, low recovery, concentrated hotspots — and gives policymakers and underwriters specific targets: stiffer, consistent penalties; a real federal reporting backbone; and industry standards that make fraud-heavy “strategic theft” harder to pull off. Until those pieces move together, theft will remain an expense line item — and the bill will continue to find its way back to the companies that haul America’s freight.
Sources: FreightWaves, American Transportation Research Institute, Transport Topics, Commercial Carrier Journal, New York Post
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