In the midst of the roughest, most prolonged freight market drought in modern history and an ongoing "fraud apocalypse," a majority of Overdrive's mostly owner-operator readership has suffered directly as a result of freight fraud, new survey results show.
The explosion of fraud since 2021 has reshaped the industry, mangling broker-carrier relationships with layers of vetting, tracking, and intrusive asks -- such as requirements to send pictures of the side of the truck or a driver's CDL, though each of those has proven not entirely effective.
[Related: FBI details double-brokering cargo theft scheme in felony charges for driver]
But owner-ops might represent a bright spot in the broader freight fraud disaster. Here's what the survey found:
- Most respondents had experienced some sort of fraud, but it's as slim as majorities get -- 49.7% said they hadn't been a victim, rounded up to 50% in the chart display with more results below.
- The most common scam was falling victim to a double-brokering ring and getting paid, though at a reduced amount.
- Losses from various frauds can mount quickly: 28% of owners who'd been scammed reported documented hits of $10,000 or more.
Experts Overdrive spoke to estimated that the problem accounts for 15% of all cargo theft, and that annually as many as 750,000 fake load posts might hit the boards, while millions and millions of malicious calls and emails go out hunting for the next carrier to scam.
However, freight fraud doesn't encompass all the many ways an owner-op can successfully haul a load and still not get paid. Broker practices like "offsetting" represent another contentious way to pocket carriers' cash.
In results below, find out just how common it is for a hardworking carrier to lose out in the "Wild Wild West" freight environment of 2026.
Just how bad is out there?
The most common scam (28% of respondents reported experiencing it) was simple double brokering, with the second broker actually paying the carrier but at a reduced amount, pocketing the difference.
A slightly smaller share of owners (23%) reported a bigger hit from double brokering -- being stiffed entirely by both brokers. Lesser numbers reported their own business ID stolen (15%) and used to procure loads or becoming an unwitting party to a cargo theft (12%) thanks to broker misdirection or the use of false credentials.
A downright scary 14% of respondents said they'd been blackmailed or threatened with reputational damage related to a load.
"I carried a brokered third-party load out of Oregon to Laredo," said one respondent. "By the time I delivered, the load had been canceled and transferred to another shipper who decided I picked up and delivered because I was doing charity work."
Another's commentary hauled all the way to the logical endpoint of the yawning freight fraud problem: "Lost too much money. Shut down."
Thankfully, around half have not been victimized, but many won the game by simply not playing. "No brokered freight" was a common comment among the group.
[Related: Getting closer to the customer: Freight relationships beyond broker boards]
No matter how much money a carrier loses careof prevalent scams, and the survey shows it can be quite a lot, lost time is a heavy factor too.
"Truckers have to supply all kinds of paperwork to get a load booked through a broker. What does the broker have to show to the trucker?" asked one commenter. "Nothing."
How widespread is the freight fraud problem?
It's almost impossible to pin down exactly how much skimping, scamming, and fake posting there is out there (DAT said it does not track fake load posts), but others helped put together some rough numbers.
Overall, the outlook is bleak.
Scott Cornell, VP of Transportation Risk & Strategy and Crime & Theft Specialist for Logistiq Insurance Solutions, mostly tracks instances of actual cargo theft.
Freight fraud scams like double brokering, if they don't result in the theft of a load, don't really register in any meaningful national statistics, but do provide a window into how prevalent the problem is.
"Strategic theft," meaning cargo theft instances resulting from some kind of deception, rather than "straight theft," or just stealing a truck/trailer, comes in 25-30 different varieties, said Cornell.
Strategic theft hovers between "28% and 33% of all cargo thefts," he added. "About half of that 30% is double brokering scams, the most common method of strategic cargo theft." Strategic theft has "taken the industry by storm," jumping 1,475% between Q1 2022 and Q4 2024.
[Related: Cargo theft proliferation ups the ante on truckers' prevention]
Dale Prax, another anti-freight fraud crusader, ventured a guess as to how many load board postings are somehow fake, whether double brokered loads, ID theft scams, or generally not on the level. He pegged the percentage of fraudulent load posts as lower than many people might expect.
"Probably less than five precent," Prax said. "While the percentage may seem low, the numbers are astronomically high."
Prax estimated that with 10 to 15 million loads posted each year, even one percent would be 100,000 to 150,000 that are deceptive in some way. Five percent would mean 500,000 to 750,000 problematic load posts -- plenty of opportunities for honest owner-ops to step on a rake.
"I think the real question is how many fraudulent carriers and brokers do these load boards allow to be customers to post or search for loads," said Prax. "I would venture to guess that number exceeds 20%" of active entities using the boards.
Highway's Q4 2025 Freight Fraud Index report detailed a few stats as well. Highway, one of many "carrier vetting" platforms that sprang up in the last few years as freight fraud exploded, said it had seen the following actions in 2025:
- Fraudulent email attempts increased 117% year-over-year, rising from 914,719 in 2024 to nearly 2 million.
- More than 8.5 million fraudulent or spoofed phone calls
- 958 unauthorized FMCSA contact changes were detected
- Domestic fraud attempts from more than 70 countries.
- Direct theft -- meaning criminals used legitimate carrier identities, equipment or insider access to steal freight -- accounted for nearly half of reported stolen loads by the end of 2025.
Arrive Logistics Chief Administrative Officer Scott Sandager pointed out that "many incidents go unreported or undetected," so the "true scale of freight fraud is far greater than this data conveys."
[Related: Beware of double brokers: Getting involved with one can be a huge knock on credibility]
How many carriers have been a victim of brokers' bogus payment offsetting schemes?
If you see a broker contract that includes an "offsetting" clause, run like hell pretty well sums up the advice of transportation attorney Hank Seaton.
Unfortunately many big brokers, notoriously TQL, do include an "offsetting" clause, which allows them to withhold payment on previous, uncontested loads if there's a claim a subsequent load.
[Related: 'TQL PAY ME MY $8,000': Owner-op confronts broker over nonpayment]
In practice, say a broker makes a claim on one load after a carrier has hauled five dozen claim-free loads, then withholds payment on the whole lot. That's exactly what recently happened between ITS Logistics and Illyrian Transport.
Luckily that's not the experience of the wide majority of survey respondents.
Fully 71% said invocation of an offsetting clause just hadn't happened to them.
Some 9% of respondents reported being able to fight it off, yet consider survey limitations here, as in the case of Illyrian, ITS settled with them to pay only half of a whopping $85,000 owed.
"The lack of meaningful financial enforcement -- particularly around detention pay and offsetting compensation -- has created a kind of Wild West that carriers are forced to navigate just to get paid at all," wrote one thoughtful commenter. "What should be straightforward compensation routinely turns into a circus of bad-faith tactics, where payment is extracted not with integrity, but with piranha-like behavior."
Importantly, owner-operators spoke of the hidden costs of freight fraud: Stress, pressure to race the clock, the desperation of lost income.
"Add to that the absence of real financial protections and the normalization of unpaid time, and the result is an industry operating under chronic stress," the prior commenter continued. "If legislation genuinely aimed to improve safety, it would address these economic pressures head-on -- because lowering cortisol across the industry may do more for safety than any additional rulebook ever could."
How do you vet brokers? Tell us via this new survey, touching on transparency matters, so-called "chameleon" entities, carrier vetting systems and surety bond claims. Your insight will help inform reporting throughout the rest of this year, no doubt. Here's a big thank you for it.
