Theft is not spread evenly across the map or the manifest. Here is where freight crime concentrated in 2025, what thieves went after, and how to read your own risk.
By the Sentrick Cargo team · Published July 12, 2026
Cargo theft is often discussed as a single national number, but freight operators do not live at the national level — they live on specific lanes, hauling specific goods, through specific states. And at that level, the risk is strikingly uneven. According to Verisk CargoNet's 2025 year-end supply chain risk analysis (released January 22, 2026), theft in 2025 concentrated in a handful of geographies and commodity types even as the overall picture shifted. Knowing where the pressure is highest is the first step to deciding where to spend your attention.
California remained the most affected state in 2025, with 1,218 recorded incidents (Verisk CargoNet, January 2026) — but the internal pattern is the more useful signal. Activity moved away from the traditional epicenter of Los Angeles County, where incidents fell about 11%, and toward regions that used to be considered lower-risk: Kern County rose roughly 82% and San Joaquin County about 44% (Verisk CargoNet, January 2026). In other words, the map is not static. As enforcement and awareness harden a known hotspot, organized theft migrates to the softer ground around it — often inland transfer points, rail-adjacent yards, and distribution corridors rather than the coastal ports everyone watches.
California is not alone. Verisk CargoNet reported significant year-over-year increases in several other states, including New Jersey (up about 50%), Indiana (up about 30%), and Pennsylvania (up about 24%) (Verisk CargoNet, January 2026). The common thread is logistics density: places where a great deal of freight is consolidated, staged, and transferred give thieves both volume to choose from and crowds to hide in.
The commodity picture is just as concentrated as the geography. Food and beverage products saw the largest increase of any category, with 708 thefts — a roughly 47% jump over 2024 (Verisk CargoNet, January 2026). It is an intuitive target: food and drink are high in aggregate value, hard to trace once broken down, and rarely serialized the way electronics are. Within that category, regional flavor matters — Verisk CargoNet noted meat and seafood were heavily targeted in the Northeast, particularly New Jersey, while tree-nut thefts clustered on the West Coast.
Metals were the other standout. Metal theft rose about 77%, driven largely by demand for copper (Verisk CargoNet, January 2026). Copper's persistent resale value makes it a recurring prize whenever commodity prices climb, and it turns otherwise ordinary building-material and industrial loads into high-interest targets.
Maps and commodity rankings are useful for allocating attention, but they can create a false sense of safety on the lanes that are not on the list. The 2025 data itself is the warning: the fastest-growing risk appeared in counties and states that were not historic hotspots the year before. Theft follows opportunity, and opportunity moves. An operator who hardens only the well-known corridors may simply be pushing organized groups toward the next quiet yard on the route. Geography tells you where risk is today; it does not tell you where a given shipment is in danger tonight.
This is where the analysis has to come down to the individual load. Knowing that food and beverage moving through New Jersey carries elevated risk is a planning input; it does not, by itself, tell you that this trailer has stopped for two unscheduled hours at 2 a.m. in a lot that is not a scheduled facility. That is the gap Sentrick Cargo is built to close — learning what normal looks like for a shipment's route, dwell times, and handling, then grading risk on a five-level behavioral status (Safe, Caution, Alert, Danger, SOS) so a dispatcher can see, at a glance, when a specific load has moved from routine to concerning.
The 2025 hotspot data is a map of where to be more careful. Turning that awareness into protection means pairing it with monitoring that understands each shipment on its own terms — because the next hotspot is, by definition, the one that was not on last year's list.
Figures in this article are drawn from Verisk CargoNet's 2025 year-end cargo theft analysis, released January 22, 2026: "Cargo Theft Losses Surge to Estimated $725 Million in 2025, Verisk CargoNet Analysis Reveals."