Protect American Roads and Supply Chains
By Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) | 4/14/2026
SEN. TODD YOUNG (R-IN)
Chair
Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines, and Safety
In late March, nine suspects were arrested by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and charged with stealing over $7 million in goods. Televisions, household appliances, printers, alcohol, and cosmetics were among the items recovered. The products were stolen from companies including TJ Maxx, Costco, and Disney.
The numbers and names may surprise Americans, but even more stunning is that such criminal operations are increasingly commonplace. A tide of cargo theft is spreading across the country, costing businesses and truckers, by some estimates, $35 billion annually.1 Consumers may not be aware of this trend, but they are impacted by it as the losses result in rising prices of everyday goods.
Cargo theft is not just carried out by amateur thieves. As commerce moved online, sophisticated transnational criminal networks formed to take advantage of vulnerabilities in our cybernetwork and transportation systems.
Yes, they hijack trucks and break into rail cars. But increasingly cargo theft is carried out in far more sophisticated ways. Double brokering, for example, in which criminals masquerade as trucking companies, order high-value shipments, and then assign the order to real trucking companies, collecting the payment and directing the shipments to unauthorized locations, where they are intercepted by thieves. Other criminal organizations use phishing to breach companies’ transportation management systems and reroute shipments.
Criminal organizations are also growing ever more strategic, targeting high-value goods like food and alcohol. Thieves stole $725 million worth of goods last year, a 60 percent rise in cargo-theft-related losses from 2024.2
Incidents of cargo theft have steadily increased since the beginning of this decade in large part because local, state, and federal law enforcement officials are poorly equipped to arrest or prosecute perpetrators. Overlapping jurisdictions, outdated technologies, and inadequate support systems all result in cargo theft going underreported or mischaracterized as property crimes at the state level.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates motor carriers, lacks adequate protections to identify fraudulent actors or remove them from its system. The agency also does not possess the statutory authority to assess civil penalties for violations of its safety or commercial regulations.
Simultaneously, a recent audit by the USDOT revealed widespread negligence of states that were illegally issuing non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) and uncovered glaring compliance failures in several states.
Congress has the means to address cargo theft and needs to act now. That is why I introduced the SAFER Transport Act. This legislation would strengthen federal efforts to prevent, detect, and punish freight fraud and cargo theft across our transportation ecosystem. It would coordinate interagency and government collaboration, close loopholes exploited by foreign dispatch agencies, and stiffen penalties for fraudulent certifications.
It would also strengthen CDL issuance requirements, mandate monthly state reporting on CDLs, and enhance oversight of CDL training providers through audits and disclosure requirements. This, in turn, would prevent unauthorized drivers from transporting domestic cargo.
The increasing sophistication of cargo thieves paired with ill-equipped law enforcement and poorly regulated licensing systems has resulted in crisis-like levels of cargo theft that poses a threat to our supply chain, and, as a result, our economic and national security.
The SAFER Transport Act takes important steps to strengthen our transportation infrastructure, combat crime that is hurting U.S. consumers and businesses, and ensure our roads are safe for all Americans.