Highway fraud report: hacked carrier email behind 40% of stolen loads in Q3

The index covers July through September and only loads reported inside Highway's network, the company says. It logged 184 stolen-load incidents, 28.1% fewer than in the second quarter but 8.2% more than a year earlier, FreightWaves reported. In the compromised cases, thieves got into carrier mailboxes and wrote to brokers from familiar addresses to ask for load details. Rate confirmations sitting in a hacked inbox gave them the rest. Spoofed and fraudulent calls blocked by Highway rose 90.3% year over year, to 119,022 in the quarter, and carrier ownership change reports more than doubled from the second quarter, to 518.

One finding touches licensing. In 87% of direct theft cases, at least one of the carrier's Highway users had a non-domiciled or limited-term CDL on record. Highway told FreightWaves it has no network-wide baseline for comparison, and the figure does not show that those users hauled or stole anything. Highway estimates that brokers who screen out such carriers lose about 7% of available capacity. The report does not count thefts the screening prevents.

Brittany Graft, Highway's chief operating officer, told a Women In Trucking conference in Dallas that carriers should turn on multifactor login for email, preferably passkeys rather than text-message codes, never read codes to callers, and call partners back on numbers already on file, The Trucker reported. She also suggested asking phone companies about protection against SIM swaps. FMCSA warned in March 2026 that USDOT and MC numbers may not be sold, bought or leased except as part of a lawful sale or merger of the company.

Across the industry, CargoNet counted 547 theft incidents in the third quarter, 33% fewer than a year earlier, while estimated losses rose 39% to $230.1 million, Land Line reported.