As the president of a Canadian claims company, I've had a front-row seat to how quickly risk in our trucking sector is evolving. Two trends in particular have gone from occasional to unmistakable over the past year: trucks striking bridges, and cargo being stolen. Neither is new. Both are accelerating. And in my opinion, the most useful takeaway isn't the size of the losses. It's how much of this is preventable.

Bridge strikes: bad luck is becoming accountability

For years, an over-height truck hitting a bridge was treated as an unfortunate accident. That framing is disappearing fast.

British Columbia has taken the hardest line in the country. The province now publishes a public report naming carriers involved in bridge strikes, has suspended dozens of operators under investigation, and has cancelled safety certificates outright. Proposed penalties would let courts fine a responsible driver up to $100,000, the stiffest such consequences in Canada. Earlier this year, a single overpass strike in Saskatoon was estimated to have caused roughly $400,000 in infrastructure damage. All from one wrong turn.

Here's the part that gets missed on the claims side: these losses rarely stop at the truck. A strike often takes the cargo with it, and when the freight is equipment or machinery, a low bridge can turn a routine haul into a total loss on more than one front. Yet almost all of it is preventable. Route planning, height verification, and in-cab warning technology stop these events before they start.

Cargo theft: the thief never touches the truck

If bridge strikes are a prevention story, cargo theft is a sophistication story, and the numbers are hard to ignore.

According to Équité Association, Canada's insurance crime bureau, truck thefts nearly doubled in the first three quarters of 2025 compared to the year before. Over the same period, the national recovery rate for stolen cargo fell into the single digits. The Greater Toronto corridor and Montreal remain the country's hotspots. Across North America, the FBI estimates supply-chain theft losses reached roughly US$725 million last year, up about 60 percent.

The detail that matters most is how it's being done. The fastest-growing schemes are digital. Criminals impersonate legitimate carriers to collect loads straight from the dock. They steal a carrier's identity, win a shipment, and quietly re-broker it. They alter paperwork so a shortage only surfaces weeks later, long after the trail has gone cold. The paperwork we've always relied on has become part of the fraud, and a registry check alone no longer tells you who you're dealing with.

Where risk control could focus

None of this is a surprise from the claims side, and the direction is clear from the public record. What we see, over and over, is a gap between how quickly these risks have changed and how slowly the controls around them have caught up. A registry check, a familiar route, a trusted stack of paperwork: habits that were fine five years ago carry more risk today.

Here's what we'd want to see clients doing, and what's worth asking about at renewal:

  • How they plan routes. Height and clearance should be checked before the truck rolls, not discovered at the bridge.
  • How they vet the carriers they hand freight to. A clean registry entry doesn't tell them who they are really dealing with.
  • Who confirms a pickup. Someone should be verifying the driver and actually reading the paperwork, not taking it at face value.
  • What technology is in the cab. Cameras, GPS and height warnings stop a lot of these losses before they start, and they are worth recognizing on the account.
  • Where the units sit. Trucks and trailers left overnight in yards or on the street, especially in the worst theft areas, are where a lot of this starts.

Most of these aren't heavy lifts. They're a matter of making the control a habit before the loss, rather than a lesson after it.

Why it matters

I'll be straight about the incentives. Claims coming in the door is our business. But a clean, profitable binder is better for everyone: the underwriter, the broker, the insured, and yes, the claims team that would rather prevent a loss than adjust one. We see where these losses start, and passing that back up the chain is part of the job.

So take this as a set of observations from the claims side, shared in the interest of a better result for the whole program. If you're seeing the same trends from where you sit, I'd welcome the conversation.

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