Rising cargo theft across Canada is forcing insurers to sharpen their scrutiny of trucking operations, with carriers facing more demanding underwriting standards as claims continue to climb and organized criminal networks increasingly use digital fraud rather than physical force to steal freight.
Speaking at the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada's annual conference in Niagara Falls, Ont., Maria-Christina Sorbo-Mayrand, an associate with Miller Thomson, told fleet operators, brokers and logistics providers that insurance should be treated as a strategic operational tool rather than an administrative requirement. The message came as new data confirms the scale and sophistication of cargo crime in Canada is accelerating.
According to Équité Association, which maintains Canada's only cargo theft database, truck and trailer thefts nearly doubled in the first three quarters of 2025 compared to the same period the year before, with truck incidents climbing from 591 to 984 and trailer thefts rising from 383 to 638. Ontario recorded approximately 1,601 thefts in 2025, with the Peel Region and the Greater Toronto Area accounting for a significant share.
The recovery picture is deteriorating. The national cargo recovery rate fell from 13% in 2024 to 9% in 2025, while the trailer recovery rate dropped from 64% to 44%, reflecting how quickly stolen goods are redistributed through organized networks once taken.
Across the US and Canada combined, estimated cargo theft losses surged 60% in 2025 to nearly $725 million, according to Verisk CargoNet, with the average theft value rising 36% to $273,990, driven by more selective, high-value targeting by organized groups. For insurers, that shift in average per-incident value is significant: a limit that was adequate for clients two years ago may now leave them materially exposed.
The nature of theft is changing in ways that complicate both underwriting and claims assessment. Sorbo-Mayrand told attendees that fraudulent pickups, where criminals impersonate legitimate carriers to take loads without physical confrontation, now represent one of the fastest-growing theft methods. Mike Grabovica, CEO of Birdseye Security Solutions, reinforced the point.
"Cargo theft is now increasingly becoming more related to fraudulent pickups," Grabovica said.
Verisk CargoNet's Q1 2026 report described the maturation of impersonation-based theft into a "systematic, scalable criminal methodology," with criminal networks using advanced phishing campaigns and remote access tools to harvest business email credentials and compromise carrier verification systems that brokers and logistics companies rely on to confirm legitimate pickups.
Équité Association has noted that as coordinated enforcement efforts drive down auto theft rates, organized crime groups are shifting capacity toward cargo and commercial vehicle crime, with a 72% year-on-year increase in vehicle finance fraud detected at the ports of Montreal and Halifax in 2025.
Sorbo-Mayrand said the claims environment is directly reshaping how insurers evaluate transportation risks. Carriers that cannot demonstrate documented security procedures, real-time tracking capabilities, surveillance infrastructure and formal policies consistently followed by employees and subcontractors are facing harder placements and tighter terms.
"Cargo theft is on the rise in 2026. It's a critical issue across Canada, especially when we're talking about high-value goods," she said. "Because theft is on the rise, claims are on the rise. When claims are on the rise, insurers look at it more closely."
Technology is increasingly part of the underwriting conversation. Sorbo-Mayrand noted that insurers are no longer satisfied by the mere presence of telematics systems or refrigerated trailer monitoring tools. They now expect carriers to demonstrate active use of the data those systems generate.
"It's not enough in 2026 to either just have the technology or just to have the policies," she said. "You need to have proof that you're putting it into place, that you're able to gather and understand the data that's coming from this information."
The rise of digitally enabled fraud has made subcontracted transportation a more acute source of claims exposure than it has historically been, because the same impersonation and credential-harvesting techniques used to execute fraudulent pickups are also being deployed to infiltrate brokered supply chains where oversight is thinner.
Sorbo-Mayrand said denied claims are increasingly tracing back to subcontracted loads or double-brokering arrangements where full insurance visibility was never established, and that certificates of insurance are an unreliable safeguard — they confirm only that coverage exists, not whether exclusions apply or whether other parties in the chain are actually protected.
She recommended strong carrier-vetting procedures, service agreements that explicitly prohibit unauthorized double brokering and regular policy reviews, particularly as cyber liability coverage becomes a more pressing consideration for carriers, warehouses and third-party logistics providers whose digital systems are themselves targets of organized theft networks.
As cargo crime evolves from physical opportunism to digitally enabled fraud, the documentation of controls, not just their existence, is becoming the decisive factor in how transportation risks are assessed, priced and renewed.
