While many U.S. residents are poised to celebrate Independence Day this week, cargo thieves will quietly celebrate unattended cargo.
Danny Ramon, director of intelligence at supply chain risk management provider Overhaul, said that holiday weekends typically see cargo theft rates spiking by 50 to 100 percent.
“We always see spikes in theft activity around longer weekends, and that’s because of the old rule that cargo at rest is cargo at risk—if it’s at rest for longer, it’s going to be at risk for longer, and therefore there’s a higher likelihood it will be stolen,” he explained.
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While he noted that the actual rate of theft fluctuates based on conditions, he said this Fourth of July is “well positioned” for those perpetuating cargo theft.
That’s due to several factors, he noted—one being that, because the Fourth of July is on a Friday, many warehouses and facilities will be left unattended for three full days. But another reason is related to the economy and the way retailers are reacting to it.
“Tariff uncertainty is causing a lot of retailers to stock up their warehouses in advance of the holiday season,” he said. “[This] is putting warehouse space at a premium, which not only makes them a much more ripe target, because they’re going to be much fuller, with much more product than they normally would [have], but it also means that cargo…is moving much further in advance of the holiday season than it would have been normally. There is a lot more cargo on the roads right now than there normally would be in the U.S.”
Retailers aren’t the only ones stocking up; Salesforce data shows that nearly one-third of U.S. consumers say they have begun frontloading goods because of potential tariff impacts. Ramon said that could see cargo thieves receiving higher-than-usual returns for the cargo they steal as consumers begin shopping online for the holidays and back-to-school season.
Overhaul expects to see the highest rates of theft on cargo left unattended outside of a delivery facility—that is to say, for instance, in the back of a truck that arrives at a warehouse early and is parked there without a driver for several days. He anticipates that could be the case as early as July 3.
“A lot of folks are going to take advantage of the fact that shippers are going to be closing down for the long weekend, and the folks who work there are going to want to get out of work as soon as possible to start that long holiday weekend,” he said. “Sometimes security gets a little bit lax on those last days, and we do see a lot of strategic theft being performed on the last business day before a long holiday weekend.”
Ramon said retailers and drivers should also be on high alert for theft on goods that are actively in transit.
While Overhaul frequently sees targeted theft on costly items like consumer electronics and high-end apparel and footwear, Ramon said most thieves will steal cargo regardless of what’s packed in the trailer. That’s, in large part, because the further rise of e-commerce platforms has made it easier for thieves to sell without an intermediary, which means there are fewer people taking cuts from the sale of products.
“There’s almost nothing that they won’t steal because there’s almost nothing that they can’t sell,” he said.
In January, Overhaul projected a year-on-year cargo theft rate increase of 22 percent by the end of 2025. Ramon said the company will soon have sharper data on what occurred in the first half of the year, but noted that his team has seen steady increases in at-large cargo theft so far this year, as compared with 2024.
For shippers and retailers hoping to safeguard their cargo for the upcoming long weekend, Ramon had a few simple recommendations.
“You want to make sure everyone in your supply chain network knows of your limited business hours, or whatever your special holiday hours are going to be,” he said. “Make sure that nobody has—or believes that they have—scheduled appointment times for times when your facility is going to be closed, and make sure that folks do not park outside of the facility waiting for it to open over the course of the holiday weekend.”
