Cargo Theft Season is Gone: It's Now a 24/7/365 Pursuit

Cargo theft used to have a season, and everybody knew it. Things got ugly around Thanksgiving and stayed ugly through Christmas. You watched the expensive loads, didn't leave full trailers sitting over a long weekend, and kept your phone on at 2 AM. Come January, you finally got some sleep.

Thieves don't work that way anymore. The serious crews pick a load weeks ahead because they know what's in it, and server racks sell just as well in April as they do in December. They get in with a fake carrier identity or a sloppy handoff at the dock, and the date on the calendar never comes up.

If your security still ramps up in November and backs off in February, you're on a schedule the thieves dropped years ago. They're happy you haven't noticed.

So, When Should Shippers Tighten Cargo Theft Controls?

The old answer was easy: around the holidays. The better answer now is “all year.”

Overhaul tracks theft daily, and historically theft fell about 34% from Q4 into Q1. That January cliff gave everyone permission to loosen the tie a little.

Coming out of the 2025 holidays, though, the drop was only 25%. Then spring arrived and barely changed the picture. April, May, and June each accounted for nearly the same share of Q2 thefts, with activity still sitting near decade highs.

Danny Ramon at Overhaul offers a pretty simple reason: a lot of fraud crews are already running near capacity. They're busy in March, busy in July, and still busy when the holiday rush gives them even more freight to work with.

That changes how shippers should think about “peak” security. If the extra callbacks, tighter carrier checks, real-time tracking, and escalation rules only come out in November, you're spending most of the year operating below the level the threat now demands.

What Does 24/7 Cargo Theft Actually Look Like?

It looks a lot more selective. Crews pick specific high-value loads, research them ahead of time, and hit them whenever they move, whether that's the week before Christmas or a random Tuesday in April.

CargoNet's Q2 2026 numbers show it plainly. Thefts fell 26% from a year earlier to 677, which would be great news if losses hadn't more than doubled to $304 million over the same quarter. Thieves are stealing less often and walking away with twice as much.

The loads they go after tell the rest of the story. By late May, CargoNet had already logged 28 thefts worth more than $1 million each, including copper, server blades, fiber transceivers, and RAM. Nobody stumbles onto a trailer like that. Someone knew what was in it before it left the dock, and once they know, the date stops mattering. They'll take it whenever it moves.

So don't take the lower theft count as good news. The people stealing freight are getting pickier, and a lot better at it.

What Lets Cargo Thieves Operate Year-Round Now?

The short answer is that they no longer have to wait for freight to sit still.

Deceptive pickup has changed the timing of the crime. A crew can compromise a carrier's email, login, or credentials, slide into a legitimate shipment, and take the load. Even if the operation around it looks completely normal. The MC number checks out, the paperwork looks familiar, and the driver arrives during the same business hours as everyone else. 

The verification process isn't always much safer. CargoNet has seen thieves take over carrier phone systems, meaning the callback meant to confirm the pickup can end up confirming the fraud instead. Deceptive pickups jumped 31% in Q1 even as overall theft declined.

Once crews can steal freight through the same tenders, emails, calls, and pickups your team handles every week, the holiday calendar loses a lot of its usefulness.  

How Should Shippers Rethink Lane Risk in a 24/7 Theft Market?

California still deserves every red flag it gets, but a year-round theft market means lane reviews can't stop at the usual suspects.

Crews are following freight into major hubs where volume is high, and security assumptions haven't always caught up. Illinois went from 6% of national thefts to 13% in a year. Memphis rose 27% even as theft declined nationally. New Jersey more than doubled in CargoNet's Q1 2026 count.

There's no mystery behind the movement. Chicago has rail, Memphis has a massive distribution network, and New Jersey has ports, warehouses, and dense Northeast freight flows. If crews are hunting valuable cargo every week of the year, they're going to spend more time where the freight is thickest.

That means lane risk needs regular reevaluation, not an annual refresh before peak season. Pull up the routes you still call “quiet” and look again. Some of those labels may be surviving on reputation long after the risk moved in.

What Does a 24/7 Cargo-Theft Response Plan Look Like?

It starts with one rule: nobody should be figuring out the plan after the alert hits.

If cargo theft can happen on a Saturday night in April as easily as a holiday weekend in December, the first 30 minutes need to be mapped out in advance:

• Confirm the alert: Check the truck, driver, location, route, and last known movement before precious time disappears into a group chat
• Call the right people: Reach the driver, carrier, broker, and shipper contacts using verified numbers already stored in the plan
• Escalate fast: An assigned after-hours owner should have authority to treat the alert as an incident without waiting for Monday morning
• Lock down the fraud: If credentials, email, or carrier identity may be compromised, shut down access and warn anyone handling related loads
• Bring in law enforcement: Keep current contacts for high-risk lanes, and know exactly what information they'll need from you
• Keep tracking: Preserve location data, timestamps, messages, and route history while the trail is still warm

The urgency is pretty simple. ATRI estimates about 3-in-4 stolen loads are never recovered, and the odds only get worse as the hours pass. A crew can move the trailer, split the freight, dump the truck, and erase a lot of useful evidence before Monday morning ever enters the conversation.

Sure, CORCA passed the House in May and could improve the broader enforcement picture. Regardless, shippers still own the first few minutes. Somebody needs to see the alert and have the authority to act, and not simply wait for the calendar to become convenient.

Write the March Plan

The holiday plan can stay. Just stop putting the rest of the year in the drawer.

Cargo theft has outgrown the calendar it used to follow. Crews are choosing specific freight, slipping into legitimate pickups, moving into new hubs, and working whenever the shipment gives them an opening. March is no longer safer because March is boring. In some ways, that's exactly what makes March appealing to a thief.

Tive helps shippers keep the same level of attention on freight in March that they instinctively bring to Thanksgiving. Tive trackers stay with the load and surface route deviations, unexpected stops, and light events while there's still time to do something about them. The Tive Seal brings that visibility to the trailer door, and teams that want extra eyes after hours can add 24/7 Live Monitoring as a separate real-time shipment visibility service.

Peak season will always get your attention: the smarter plan is the one that still works when nothing about the day feels special.

Write that one first.

Get started with Tive today.