Logistics and Warehouse Crime on the I-70 Corridor: What Central Ohio Operators and Property Owners Need to Know

Posted September 25, 2026

Central Ohio was built to move freight. From here a truck reaches about half the U.S. population inside a day, and the region supports roughly 5,000 logistics operations and more than 90,000 transportation and logistics workers. I-70 runs straight through the middle of it, crossing I-71 and looping into I-270, with Rickenbacker, the intermodal terminals, and the big-box distribution parks in Groveport, Obetz, Etna, West Jefferson, and Pataskala strung along those routes. The market is still growing hard: 9.0 million square feet were under construction as of mid-2026, on top of 2.7 million delivered in the second quarter alone.

Everything that makes this region efficient for shippers makes it efficient for the people stealing from them. And what they’re stealing has changed a great deal in the past two years.

The numbers

Nationally, cargo theft is now a high-dollar crime rather than a high-volume one. Verisk CargoNet recorded 2,646 confirmed cargo theft incidents in 2025 — up 18 percent over 2024 — while estimated losses jumped roughly 60 percent to about $725 million. The average loss per theft climbed 36 percent, to $273,990.

The 2026 numbers make the shift even clearer. In the second quarter, reported incidents actually fell 26 percent year over year — but losses more than doubled, from $135.7 million to $304.6 million, with the average theft hitting $564,009. As CargoNet’s Keith Lewis put it, “Lower incident volume should not be mistaken for lower risk.”

Retailers are feeling the same thing from the other end of the chain. In the National Retail Federation’s 2025 survey, half of retailers reported an increase in cargo or supply chain theft over the prior twelve months, and 67 percent reported organized groups operating across borders.

Closer to home, organized retail crime and fraud are estimated to cost Ohio businesses $2 billion to $3 billion a year. In 2026 the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office stood up a multi-agency task force — F.O.R.C.E., for Fraud & Organized Retail Crime Engagement — with Columbus, Westerville, Grandview Heights, Clinton Township, Delaware County, Homeland Security Investigations, and two prosecutors’ offices. Since March it has recovered more than $145,000 in merchandise and secured nine indictments, with fourteen more investigations open.

One caveat worth stating plainly: these figures are floors, not ceilings. Industry estimates suggest six to seven unreported cargo thefts for every one that gets reported, and 64 percent of retailers tell the NRF they report fewer than half their theft incidents to police at all.

How the crime has changed

The fraud moved upstream. The fastest-growing category isn’t a crowbar on a trailer door — it’s a laptop. In April 2026 the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center warned of surging cyber-enabled strategic cargo theft: phishing emails disguised as carrier agreements, compromised broker accounts, tens of thousands of fake load postings, and legitimate drivers unknowingly hauling freight to a criminal’s address. Overhaul logged a 31 percent rise in deceptive pickup schemes in the first quarter of 2026 alone. The load leaves your dock with paperwork that looks right.

Metals are back. Copper prices pulled metal thefts up 77 percent in 2025. That matters well beyond freight: it puts rooftop HVAC, transformers, electrical rooms, and anything on a vacant building’s roof squarely in play.

Thieves follow the resale market. Food and beverage led all commodities in 2025 at 708 thefts, up 47 percent — it’s untraceable and it moves fast. Electronics, auto parts, and enterprise computing hardware round out the list.

The pressure is moving inland. Indiana was up 30 percent in 2025, with Indianapolis absorbing activity displaced from the coasts. Pennsylvania was up 24 percent. Central Ohio sits on I-70 directly between them.

Why the corridor itself is part of the risk

Freight is most vulnerable when it stops moving. Nationally there is roughly one truck parking space for every eleven trucks on the road, which is why loaded trailers end up on ramps, shoulders, and unfenced lots overnight. Ohio is spending $150 million to add about 1,400 spaces across 33 sites in 17 counties, Franklin among them, but that construction runs through the end of 2027.

Until then, drivers park where they can — and a loaded trailer sitting unattended within sight of an interstate is the single easiest target in this entire category.

The inside threat is real too. In a 2023 Columbus case, a trucking company owner ran a theft ring out of a local warehouse: drivers were routed to the building, trailer seal bolts were cut and replaced so the load looked untouched, and the goods were consolidated, stored, or sold off — including roughly $41,000 in robot vacuums bound for Amazon and about $32,000 in retail merchandise. Some of it went to pawn shops.

Reducing risk at the facility

Verify every pickup independently. Call the broker or carrier on a number you already have — never one printed on the paperwork in front of you. Photograph the driver’s license, the tractor and trailer numbers, and the seal.
Treat seals as evidence, not decoration. Log seal numbers at load and at delivery, use bolt seals, and train dock staff that a seal that looks “close enough” is a failure.
Control the yard, not just the building. Gate access, check trailers in and out, and keep loaded trailers away from the fence line and out of easy sight from the road.
Cover the quiet hours. Facility pilferage concentrates overnight and in the early morning. So does yard theft.
Light the perimeter and the trailer rows, not just the dock doors.
Lock down the electronics. Train staff on phishing, require two-factor authentication, and confirm any change to a delivery address through a second channel.
Report every incident. Underreporting is exactly why these crews work the same corridor for years.

What property managers and landlords can do

You may not own the freight, but you own the conditions that make a property attractive to work.

Know which of your buildings are sitting empty. Columbus industrial vacancy is tight — 5.2 percent in the second quarter of 2026 — but 2.7 million square feet delivered in that quarter alone and 9.0 million more are under construction. A brand-new shell waiting on its first tenant is full of fresh copper, has an unwatched roof, and often has no one assigned to it at night. Newly completed and between-tenant buildings are the most common thing we’re asked to patrol.

Own the shared areas. Drive aisles, truck courts, trailer storage, and the back fence line are usually landlord responsibility. Tenants secure their own docks and assume someone is watching everything else — often nobody is.

Walk the perimeter after dark. Look for cut or lifted fence fabric, gates that don’t latch, burned-out pole lights, overgrowth along the back line, and access from adjacent vacant parcels. Do it at 11 p.m., not at 2 p.m.

Be honest about what cameras do. They document; they rarely deter. Their value is the case file afterward — which requires coverage of gates and drive aisles, usable night video, current retention, and someone who knows how to pull the footage.

Add unpredictable presence overnight. This is the piece that actually changes behavior. A crew watching a park needs to know when it’s unwatched. Randomized marked patrols through the truck courts and trailer rows during peak hours remove that certainty — across a multi-building park, it’s the most cost-effective coverage available. It’s the same pattern we wrote about in our look at Central Ohio car break-ins: opportunity concentrates wherever nobody is watching.

Track incidents across the whole park. Most owners can’t say how many break-ins, trespass calls, or attempted entries their property had last year. Log every one with date, time, and location. Two months of that data will show you exactly where your gap is.

Get an honest read on your property

Distribution properties get targeted because they’re predictable: big footprints, long fence lines, valuable goods sitting still, and very few people on site after the second shift goes home. Lighting, access control, and visible, unpredictable patrol coverage change that math — usually for far less than a single stolen load.

PSI’s Private Security and Investigations provides armed patrol officers and on-site security for industrial, warehouse, and distribution properties across Columbus and Central Ohio, with routes built around each property’s actual risk pattern. Learn more about our vehicle patrol services, or contact us for a free security assessment of your facility and yard.