Fewer thefts and far bigger losses is the signature of fraud replacing brute force. Verisk CargoNet documented 677 cargo theft incidents in the second quarter of 2026 — down 26% year over year — while estimated losses reached $304.6 million, more than double the $135.7 million a year earlier. Thieves are not stealing more often. They are stealing better, and a large share of that improvement is paperwork: fake carriers, re-brokered loads, and identities borrowed from real operators. The good news for a dispatcher is that double-brokering is one of the most preventable frauds in freight, because it always leaves the same fingerprints.
How the Scheme Actually Runs
The mechanics are simple enough to describe in two sentences. A party posing as a legitimate carrier accepts a load from a broker, then quietly re-brokers it to an unrelated carrier who actually hauls the freight. The middleman collects payment from the broker and disappears, and the carrier who moved the load has no contract with anyone who will pay them.
There is a nastier variant that ends in cargo loss instead of nonpayment: the freight goes to a party that never intended to deliver it. Heavy Duty Trucking has documented how strategic fraud, double-brokering, and cybercrime have converged into a single playbook, and industry analysis now attributes roughly a third of cargo crime to this category rather than to physical theft.
The identity piece is what breaks conventional vetting. Reporting from FreightCaviar on analysis of hundreds of stolen loads found many were linked to carriers that passed standard digital verification — real MC numbers belonging to operators who had already stopped running, whose identities were then assumed. A clean record check is necessary and no longer sufficient.
Cargo theft losses more than doubled to $304 million in Q2 despite a drop in thefts, driven by high-value metals and technology heists.
Verisk CargoNet, Q2 2026 cargo theft analysis
The Vetting Sequence, in Order
Run this before a truck is dispatched, not after a problem appears. It takes under ten minutes once you have done it a few times, and the order matters — each step assumes the previous one passed.
- Pull the authority yourself, from the source. Look up the MC or DOT number in the FMCSA Licensing and Insurance system rather than accepting a screenshot or PDF. Confirm the authority is active, the type is correct (a broker authority is not a carrier authority), and the insurance is on file and current.
- Match the address and phone against the registration. A brand-new email domain, a phone number that does not appear on the FMCSA record, or a physical address that is a mail drop are the three most common indicators of an assumed identity.
- Check the age of the authority against the size of the ask. An authority granted six weeks ago wanting to move a high-value electronics or metals load is the exact profile that shows up in loss data. New is not automatically fraudulent, but new plus high-value plus urgency is a stop.
- Call back on a number you found yourself. Never the number in the email signature, never the number on the rate confirmation. Look it up independently and verify the load with someone who answers on that line.
- Verify the entity name matches on every document. The rate confirmation, the insurance certificate, the W-9, and the FMCSA record should all show the same legal name. A near-match — an extra LLC, a different state of incorporation, a slightly different spelling — is the single most reliable double-brokering tell.
- Confirm the driver and equipment at pickup. Get the driver’s name, cell number, tractor and trailer numbers before the appointment, and have the shipper confirm the arriving driver matches. A load handed to a driver nobody named in advance is a load you cannot trace.
- Require written consent before any re-brokering. Put it in your carrier agreement and enforce it. If a carrier asks after the fact whether it was okay to hand the load off, the answer needed to have been given in writing beforehand.
- Watch the tracking pattern, not just the location. Spoofed GPS and borrowed tracking links are common. A truck whose position updates in unnaturally regular increments, or which stops reporting between the pickup and the first check call, deserves a phone call to the driver directly.
The Red Flags That Should Stop a Booking Cold
Some signals are not judgment calls. If you see these, do not proceed until they are resolved, regardless of how good the rate is or how much pressure you feel to cover the truck.
A rate meaningfully above market for an easy lane. A request to change remittance details mid-load. Documents sent from a free email domain when the company has a real one. Refusal to do a callback on a published number. Pressure to move before paperwork is complete. And any request to change the delivery location after the freight is loaded — reconsignments happen legitimately, but they are also how a load walks away, so confirm every one directly with the broker of record on a verified line.
The loss-severity trend is the reason to be strict rather than reasonable about this. When average loss per incident rises sharply, the cost of being wrong once outweighs the cost of being slow a hundred times.
What to Do Next
Turn the eight steps into an actual checklist inside whatever system you already use, with a field for each verification and a place to note who confirmed it and when. Vetting that lives in your head does not survive a busy Friday, and a busy Friday is exactly when these loads get offered.
Then add the one rule that costs nothing and stops most of it: no load moves on a name that does not match across all four documents. Not a similar name, not a name with an explanation attached. If the FMCSA record, the rate confirmation, the insurance certificate, and the W-9 do not all read the same, the answer is no until they do.
