A growing wave of cargo, transport truck and trailer thefts is hitting Canada’s transportation sector , costing industry and consumers millions of dollars every year.

Truck thefts jumped to 984 from 591 and trailer thefts rose to 638 from 383 in the first three quarters of 2025 compared with the same period a year ago, according to data collected from insurers, transportation firms, retailers and law enforcement.

Reported cargo thefts increased slightly to 139 from 132, but that significantly understates the real volume, Sid Kingma, director of Investigative Services, Western Canada, at Équité Association, said.

“If 638 trailers were stolen, but only 139 loads were reported missing, that suggests nearly 500 empty trailers went missing — an unlikely scenario,” he said, adding that many thefts go unreported because companies fear reputational damage, are self-insured up to certain thresholds or want to avoid insurance premium increases. “It’s a bit of a Wild West out there.”

There was a record 27 per cent jump in cargo theft across the United States and Canada in 2024, according to Verisk Analytics Inc.’s CargoNet, with 3,625 incidents. The average value per theft also increased, pushing total losses to more than US$454 million.

Kingma, whose team manages Canada’s largest database of stolen trucks, trailers and cargo, works with insurers,

transportation companies and police to track thefts and identify recovered goods, which can be very difficult. Unlike vehicles, which have identification numbers, most cargo can’t be individually identified, so it’s much harder to trace when stolen.

The problem is worsened by a regulatory gap, Kingma said. Canada does not have a dedicated uniform crime reporting (UCR) code for cargo theft. Incidents are typically logged under generic categories such as theft over $5,000.

“We can’t quantify how big the problem actually is,” he said.

Équité has been advocating for a dedicated UCR code to help police, insurers and the transportation sector understand the true scope of the losses piling up.

But even with partial reporting, the trend is clear. Canada’s major distribution hubs , especially Mississauga and Brampton in Ontario, recorded more than 3,000 thefts between 2020 and 2025. Montreal had 371 thefts, Calgary about 375 and Edmonton 234.

About half the stolen trucks and trailers are eventually recovered — typically abandoned and empty — but only 11 per cent of the stolen cargo is ever found, Kingma said. Food and other perishables vanish quickly, often resold to unscrupulous retailers or discarded.

Kingma classifies cargo theft into three types: pilfering, when small amounts of product disappear; straight theft, when a truck or trailer is stolen from a yard, rest stop or parking lot; and strategic theft, which is organized, fraud-based theft involving impersonation and false credentials.

Strategic theft, the fastest-growing category, often involves organized criminals working with cyber scammers. They pretend to be legitimate transport companies online, forge documents, win contracts for valuable shipments and then take the cargo and disappear.

“Sometimes they rebroker it to a legitimate carrier, then change the delivery location once the load is on the road,” Kingma said.

Earlier this year, Peel Region police in Ontario uncovered a $1.5-million cargo theft scheme in which fraudsters used the defunct carrier All Days Trucking to book loads at discounted rates before rerouting the freight and cutting off contact. Investigators traced the operation to Bura Ltd. Inc. in Brampton, where several stolen trailers and shipments were recovered.

Organized crime groups are increasingly involved partly because the penalties for being caught are limited, Kingma said. There isn’t a specialized criminal charge for cargo theft, so offenders often only face general theft or fraud counts, even for loads worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It’s a high-reward, low-risk type of crime,” he said. “If you steal the right product, it can be really high value.”

The consequences can be deadly. For example, Kingma said one case in Mississauga involved a driver of a stolen tractor-trailer who was killed after crashing into two vehicles. The two other drivers were treated in hospital for serious injuries.

Some schemes are more elaborate. In one Ontario investigation, thieves performed “rollover thefts,” climbing onto moving trucks on Highway 401 to take cargo without the driver stopping.

Cargo theft rarely affects individuals directly, so the public hears little about it unless it’s as brazen as the $20-million gold bullion heist at Toronto Pearson International Airport in 2023. But the economic impact is widespread.

“The impacts of these thefts get built back into the goods we’re purchasing at the retail level,” Kingma said.

Équité recorded $205 million in cargo losses between 2020 and 2025, which he believes is just a fraction of the actual losses.

Sandra Paoliello, vice-president of ATS Container Services Inc. in Montreal, said fraud in the shipping container market has surged since COVID-19, with scammers increasingly impersonating legitimate businesses.

“The most difficult one is when they mask a legitimate company such as ourselves,” she said. “They’ll use our name online, set up unrealistic pricing … customers think they’re dealing with us, get an invoice with our logo and send 50 per cent or even the full amount.”

Many scams occur on online marketplaces such as Facebook and often involve operators based outside Canada.

“Even the police are not seeing the scale,” Paoliello said. “We’re getting calls from Chicoutimi, from Edmonton. It becomes significant when you look at the scale of what’s happening.”

Terry Cutler, a Montreal-based cybersecurity expert, said organized criminals are blending online fraud with traditional cargo theft. Scammers use fake paperwork, cloned websites and stolen data to pick up entire shipping containers without detection.

They also spoof email domains and phone numbers, making messages appear to come from trusted sources. Some call from numbers that appear local while operating overseas. In cases where a business has a data breach, criminals can send convincing fake invoices using real purchase orders, names or signatures.

“Most companies don’t realize that the average time a hacker is in a network is 286 days,” Cutler said. “By the time a fraudulent pickup occurs, the criminals already have what they need.”

To address rising thefts, Bloodhound Tracking Device Inc. (BTD) recently added satellite tracking through the Iridium network in partnership with MetOcean Telematics Ltd., which allows containers to send alerts even without cellphone service.

BTD uses a mesh network: if one unit can’t connect, it stores data and transmits it through another device when possible. It also includes sensors for tampering, temperature, humidity and gases, plus an internal camera photographing breaches with timestamps.

“Criminals now use digital tools to exploit gaps,” Curtis Spencer, BTD’s chief executive, said. “Our system makes sure containers can still report what’s happening, even in difficult locations.”

The technology has been tested across oceans and North America, and over 200,000 miles with 98 per cent accuracy, he said. In one case, it captured photos of a thief at a dock in Mexico. He expects insurers may eventually require secure tracking to reduce losses.

“Once we get another year of data under our belt, insurance companies are going to start demanding this,” he said. “They’re the ones paying through the nose right now.”

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