Cargo theft continues to chug along in the U.S. market.
Data from Overhaul, shared exclusively with Sourcing Journal, shows instances of cargo theft increased by 10 percent in the first half of 2025, as compared with the first half of 2024. The company recorded 525 cargo theft incidents in Q2, up 4 percent from Q1 but up 33 percent from Q2 last year. That figure only includes reliably reported instances that include all necessary information for investigation, according to Overhaul.
While the first half’s rate of change is lower than projected by the supply chain intelligence firm, Danny Ramon, director of intelligence and response, said double-digit increases are still troubling.
“10 percent is a lot when you take into [account] that that’s compounded, year after year, quarter after quarter of record-breaking cargo theft volumes,” he said. “To see another double-digit increase on top of the last half decade that we’ve already had is not the correct direction that we want it to be going.”
At the outset of the year, Outset projected that cargo theft rates would be up 22 percent year on year, as compared with 2024. But it has now adjusted its predictions for the second half of the year down, projecting a 15 percent increase, as compared with the second half of 2024.
Ramon said that comes from the fact that many crime rings are focusing on lower-value targets that seem like a safer bet.
“I think the deceleration of increase is more a function of the fact that organized players who are currently operating have reached their temporary operating threshold, where they can’t really perform more without expanding their operations,” he said.
Still, Ramon expects to see at least one more transnational cargo theft gang pop up in the next 18 to 24 months, which could see yet a further increase in cargo theft rates year on year nationwide.
While cargo theft rings previously focused on what Overhaul calls “straight theft”—that is to say, stealing an entire truckload—they have expanded their borders in recent years. In Q2 2025, more than half of all reported and recorded cargo thefts were pilferings. Less than a quarter of accounted-for thefts were theft of full truckload. Seven percent of thefts were deceptive pickups, which Ramon’s team refers to as “strategic theft.”
“Because of how diverse cargo theft is becoming, it’s no longer just one main theft type that’s driving all of the trends. Now, we’re dealing with three big buckets of cargo theft: straight theft, strategic theft and pilferage,” he said.
Type of crime isn’t the only piece of the equation Overhaul has seen diversify over the past several years. Ramon said that in prior years, many instances of cargo theft would be reported on Fridays and Mondays. Now, the company’s data shows, there’s more of an even distribution. Mondays and Fridays each saw 17 percent of cargo thefts in Q2, while Wednesdays saw 18 percent. Tuesdays and Thursdays accounted for 16 percent and 14 percent of thefts, respectively.
While cargo theft remains a significant problem for retailers nationwide, most of the physical theft occurs in the South. Overhaul data showed that 40 percent of the nation’s thefts in Q2 occurred in the Southwestern U.S., inclusive of a major hotspot in Southern California. Ramon said a lot of the traffic coming through the region is attributable to that hotspot, which is located not far from the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach.
“With the amount of shippers or retailers frontloading their inventory because of tariff uncertainty, we’re seeing even more volume. We’re seeing a lot of the attention that had shifted eastward reconcentrating in Southern California because of the abundance of cargo that’s flowing into the country right now,” Ramon explained, noting that many organizations have been frontloading goods inbound from Asia, which is why the Southern California ports are of particular note.
Still, that extra cargo inbound from overseas doesn’t necessarily have an immediate home when it arrives in the U.S. And as Overhaul often says, “Cargo at rest is cargo at risk.”
“When there’s a big influx in cargo, that does not necessarily [exist] on a regular cadence, it doesn’t increase the amount of drivers that are available; it doesn’t increase the amount of warehouse space that’s available,” he said. “This is the same thing that happened in 2020, after the pandemic when everything started flowing back in from China. The ports got clogged down, and [shipments] got stuck in Southern California.”
The Southeast U.S. also has a cargo theft problem; in Q2, 38 percent of thefts occurred in this region. According to Overhaul, the top five states for cargo theft last quarter were, in order, California, Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Among those states, apparel and footwear were popular targets in Illinois and California; 20 percent of all items reported stolen by cargo thieves in Illinois fell in that category last quarter, while 11 percent of the stolen items in California fell into that bucket. In other states, items like consumer electronics, home and auto were popular.
Ramon said it’s difficult to predict trends around fashion and apparel theft. While the category accounted for 9 percent of all cargo stolen in Q2, up 11 percent from Q2 2024, thieves’ efforts around apparel and footwear products have still declined by 32 percent since Q1.
Overhaul doesn’t have any direct projections about where the category will be headed in the latter half of the year, because it’s highly trend dependent, Ramon said.
“There’s the equivalent of the ‘it’ toy for Christmas season in the fashion world, and every once in a while that item grabs people beyond just the fashion world, and it becomes a pop culture sensation,” he said. “Anything that’s viral drives outsized attention and targeting within cargo theft.”
Retail and consumer goods industries need to keep their eyes open ahead of the holiday season—especially as tariffs and macroeconomic uncertainty create unusual pathways for some cargo shipments, Ramon said.
“The message from the data really is that the criminals are not lessening their efforts. They’re increasing their efforts, which means we have to do the same,” he said. “We have to increase our vigilance. We have to increase our security posture in order to keep pace with the criminal effort.”
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