Inside the booking process: how Aldenbridge Freight Forwarding keeps your freight secure

Cargo theft losses across the U.S. and Canada surged to an estimated $725 million in 2025, a 60 percent jump over the prior year, even as the number of incidents held roughly flat (Verisk CargoNet). The reason is a shift in tactics: bad actors are targeting higher-value loads, and increasingly the threat no longer starts on the highway. It starts inside the booking process. Between 2022 and 2024, strategic theft (fraud, identity theft, and double brokering) rose an estimated 1,475 percent and now approaches 40 percent of all cargo crime.

In a double-brokering scheme, a criminal steals a legitimate carrier’s identity, clears a broker’s vetting, secures a load, then re-brokers it to an unsuspecting motor carrier while the freight quietly disappears or is rerouted and relabeled. Every shipment a customer entrusts to us represents their product, their commitments, and their reputation.

Continuous carrier qualification at every load

Most providers vet a carrier once, at onboarding, and move on. We don’t. At Aldenbridge Freight Forwarding, carrier qualification is continuous: we re-verify that operating authority is active, confirm liability and cargo insurance are current (we track cargo insurance at the load level, including on temperature-sensitive reefer trucking moves), and review safety and compliance data at the load level, not just when a carrier first joins our network. Authority, insurance, ownership, and safety scores all change over time, and a carrier that was sound six months ago may not be today. We pair that with real-time shipment visibility, so a load is watched from pickup to delivery rather than checked once and forgotten.

The last line of defense is at the dock

Carrier vetting only goes so far. The final checkpoint before freight leaves the building is your warehouse team, and a few disciplined steps stop most fraudulent pickups cold:

• Confirm the trucking company name on the tractor matches the load confirmation, and verify the driver against dispatch records.
• Confirm tractor and trailer numbers match what was provided before pickup.
• Verify the carrier’s Motor Carrier (MC) or Department of Transportation (DOT) number when appropriate.
• Be cautious of last-minute carrier substitutions or unauthorized requests to change pickup details.
• Refuse requests to transfer freight to another vehicle without proper authorization and documentation.
• Report suspicious activity or inconsistencies immediately.

Move freight with a partner that verifies at every step

Cargo crime is getting more expensive per load, and the fastest-growing schemes target the booking process rather than the truck. That rewards shippers who treat carrier verification as an ongoing discipline, the way any serious 3PL (third-party logistics) partner should, and penalizes those who rely on a single onboarding check. Through authority and insurance re-verification at every load, real-time visibility, and disciplined dock-level checks, our freight forwarding and brokerage services work to keep your freight out of the wrong hands and on schedule.

Want to see how we vet and monitor every carrier in our network? Reach out to our team at freight@aldenbridge.com for a walkthrough of our carrier security process and a review of where your freight may be exposed.

Source: Verisk CargoNet 2025 Supply Chain Risk Trends Analysis.