Freight Fraud Risks: Seven Checks for Logistics Teams
Quick Answer
Freight fraud deserves a repeatable review process. These seven checks give brokers, shippers, and operations teams clear places to ask questions before a shipment problem becomes harder to untangle.
In this article
1. Confirm Who Is Contacting You
Keep a verified business contact with the shipment record. When a new person asks for load details, establish their role before sharing instructions. An email signature, company logo, or copied carrier number is only part of the picture.
2. Review Changes Before Pickup
Decide which changes need a fresh approval: a different carrier, replacement truck, new driver, or revised pickup reference. Make the approved details available to the shipping facility. Record the person who authorized a substitution so the next shift can understand the decision.
3. Read Documents Together
Compare the names and shipment references across the tender, pickup information, and delivery paperwork. An unexplained inconsistency should become a specific question for the responsible party. Keep the original version when a corrected document arrives so the record shows what changed.
4. Separate Payment Verification From Urgency
A request to change the payee or bank account should follow your payment approval procedure. FBI guidance on business email compromise explains why independently checking payment changes matters. Do not let an urgent delivery issue eliminate that review.
5. Understand Who Will Perform the Haul
Ask who accepted the shipment and which carrier is expected to transport it. Resolve unexplained differences before relying on the arrangement. See our double-brokering article for a fuller discussion of unauthorized reassignment and authorized co-brokering.
6. Give Shipment Alerts an Owner
An alert is useful when someone reviews it. Choose who handles arrivals, departures, delivery updates, delays, and potential GPS manipulation. Define when an unresolved issue should move to another person and what needs to be communicated to the customer.
7. Keep an Incident Record
If something appears wrong, make a timeline using actual messages and shipment events. Separate observations from assumptions. Keep the questions, the answers received, and the next action together. FMCSA’s fraud and identity-theft page provides official reporting resources.
Apply the Checks With CargoGuard
CargoGuard brings driver verification information, truck photos, five-second location updates, alerts, and delivery records into the shipment workflow. Email and SMS alerts, custom escalation rules, and automatic shipper or customer notifications support follow-up. Review the shipment alert tools and decide how your team will respond. Technology supplies information; people still need to resolve exceptions.
Review Your Shipment Workflow
See how CargoGuard brings driver checks, tracking updates, alerts, photos, and delivery records into your team’s workflow.