IN Brief:
- CargoNet recorded 273 theft incidents across five Labor Day periods, with estimated commodity losses of about $31.8 million.
- California, Texas, and Illinois accounted for 48% of incidents, while 71% occurred on the working days immediately around the holiday.
- Criminal groups are increasingly combining physical cargo theft with compromised carrier accounts, phone systems, email, and compliance platforms.
CargoNet has warned that cargo theft remains elevated around the United States Labor Day period, with its latest five-year analysis identifying 273 incidents and an estimated $31.8 million in stolen commodity value between 2021 and 2025.
The Verisk business examined incidents recorded from the Thursday before Labor Day through the following Wednesday. Annual totals rose from 33 incidents in 2021 to 56 in 2025, while 2024 produced the five-year high of 70, leaving the recent baseline materially above the level seen at the start of the period.
The timing is less intuitive than the familiar image of freight left unattended over a long weekend. Friday accounted for 55 incidents, Tuesday for 49, Thursday for 46, and Wednesday for 44. Together, those four working days represented 194 of the 273 incidents, or 71% of the five-year total.
CargoNet links that pattern partly to the growing use of deceptive pickup and non-delivery schemes, which depend on staff, telephones, dispatch systems, and ordinary freight processes being active. Traditional theft of parked freight remains part of the exposure, but organised groups are increasingly combining physical crime with compromised carrier accounts, cloud-based phone systems, email credentials, and access to compliance platforms.
That changes where verification can fail. A carrier may be legitimate when it is initially approved, yet a criminal who gains access to a trusted account can still alter collection details, redirect a load, or insert fraudulent contact information later in the shipment. The weak point is no longer confined to onboarding or a forged document presented at the warehouse gate.
CargoNet describes holiday exposure as two overlapping risks: freight sitting stationary during closures and verification failures created when reduced staffing or time pressure make fraudulent changes easier to push through. The five-year timing data suggests the second problem is especially important because reported thefts cluster on the working days around the holiday rather than on Labor Day itself.
Geography remains concentrated around the country’s largest freight markets. California accounted for 70 incidents in the analysis, Texas for 38, and Illinois for 22. Together, the three states represented 48% of all cases, reflecting the combination of large distribution networks, intermodal infrastructure, dense consumer markets, and multiple routes through which stolen goods can be moved or resold.
The commodity mix is similarly commercial. Food and beverage shipments led with 49 incidents, followed by household goods with 27, electronics with 25, vehicles and accessories with 20, and metals with 11. These are categories with established resale demand and, in many cases, products that can be split into smaller lots quickly after a theft.
The estimated $31.8 million value covers the commodity loss recorded across the five Labor Day analysis periods. It does not capture every downstream cost created when a shipment disappears, including replacement transport, claims administration, delayed production, missed customer deliveries, or emergency procurement.
Recent US cargo-theft data has already shown that the wider problem extends beyond one holiday. Earlier second-quarter analysis used by IN Supply recorded 605 incidents in the United States, while CargoNet’s own 2026 holiday advisories have continued to highlight elevated activity across major freight corridors.
The growing digital component makes static compliance checks less decisive on their own. Insurance, operating authority, and company identity may all be valid at the point a load is tendered, but those facts do not prove that a later email, telephone call, or portal instruction still comes from the authorised party.
Transport management and warehouse processes consequently become part of the security boundary. A changed pickup number, altered delivery address, new contact, or unexpected equipment instruction can look routine in a busy operation, particularly when a team is clearing freight before a closure or restarting after one.
The same pressure applies to carriers and brokers. Holiday staffing can reduce the number of people available to verify an exception, while drivers and dispatchers still face appointment windows and customer deadlines. Criminal groups benefit when an unusual instruction is treated as something that has to be resolved quickly rather than checked independently.
CargoNet’s analysis does not predict how many thefts will occur during Labor Day 2026, and the 273 incidents belong to the preceding five holiday periods. It does, however, define the days on which the historical concentration has been highest and the methods that have become more prominent.
As the current holiday period moves into its final working days, the historical risk window remains open. Tuesday has been the second most active day in the five-year record, with 49 incidents, and Wednesday has accounted for another 44, meaning the elevated Labor Day exposure does not end when the holiday Monday does.
