The assets easiest to steal are the ones nobody notices are missing. Here's what unpowered tracking involves, and the single configuration decision that determines whether your tracker lasts one year or ten.
Verisk CargoNet's analysis of 2025 found:
| Metric | 2025 | 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confirmed cargo theft incidents | 2,646 | 2,243 | +18% |
| Estimated total losses | ~$725 million | — | +60% |
| Average value per theft | $273,990 | $202,364 | +36% |
The important detail is in the relationship between those rows. Incident count rose modestly. Loss value rose 60%, and average value per theft rose 36%.
Thieves didn't steal much more often. They stole better.
Commodity shifts reinforce it: food and beverage thefts up 47%, metals up 77% driven by copper, with enterprise computing hardware newly in the top tier.
Separately, a 2025 dataset published by Overhaul — compiled under a different methodology, so the two sets shouldn't be blended — found 36% of thefts occurred at warehouses and distribution centres and 17% at truck stops and fuel stations, with Georgia accounting for about 4% of US cargo theft.
The two locations where most theft happens are the two places your trailers sit unattended.
A self-contained device with its own battery, sealed against weather, that reports position on a schedule.
Representative specifications from a current unit:
Longer-life variants exist for very low-frequency applications — roll-offs, dumpsters, dry vans — with stated life up to ten years. At the other end, Bluetooth tags for tools and small equipment run around three years.
Here's the part that gets skipped, and it matters more than which device you buy.
Battery life is dominated by reporting frequency, and reporting frequency is a configuration decision made at install time.
Typical modes:
The same device on daily reporting and on 15-minute reporting is the same hardware with wildly different service lives.
The clearest evidence that manufacturers know this: high-frequency mode on the unit above automatically disables itself after 72 hours. That's a deliberate battery-preservation guard built in by the manufacturer, and it tells you exactly how expensive that mode is.
What this means practically: decide what the asset is for before you configure. A trailer that moves twice a week doesn't need 15-minute reporting — it needs to tell you when it moved and where it stopped. A high-value asset in active recovery does need high frequency, briefly.
Get this wrong in the aggressive direction and you're replacing batteries across a yard full of trailers in eighteen months instead of in five years.
Wired with battery backup. For trailers with a power connection, generators, and powered equipment. Runs off the asset's power, falls back to internal battery when disconnected — which is exactly the moment you most want it reporting.
Battery-only. For anything with no power at all. Roll-offs, containers, un-powered trailers, site equipment.
Bluetooth tags. For tools, ladders, toolboxes. These don't report position independently — they're detected in range by a gateway on a vehicle or in a building. Good for "which truck is that ladder on," not for "where is that ladder now."
On a truck you're hiding a device inside a dash. On a trailer you're mounting something outdoors, permanently, that needs to survive weather and stay hidden from anyone who knows to look.
Considerations that come up every time:
You'll see solar-supplemented asset trackers advertised with long runtime figures.
We looked for independent testing and couldn't find any — every specification we located came from a tracker vendor's own product page with no third-party verification.
What we can say without inventing numbers: solar supplements an internal battery rather than replacing it, and its contribution depends entirely on panel orientation, how dirty the panel gets, and seasonal light. All three are consequences of where and how the unit is mounted, which puts it back in the same category as everything else here — an installation decision rather than a specification.
Typically 3 to 5 years, with longer-life variants stated up to 10 years for very low-frequency use. But that range is dominated by how often the device reports, which is set at configuration. The same hardware on daily reporting versus 15-minute reporting has dramatically different service life — manufacturers build in guards like auto-disabling high-frequency mode after 72 hours precisely because of this.
The value is, more than the count. Verisk CargoNet recorded 2,646 confirmed thefts in 2025 against 2,243 in 2024, but estimated losses rose roughly 60% to around $725 million and average value per theft rose 36% to $273,990. Thieves shifted to higher-value targets rather than stealing more often.
Overhaul's 2025 data puts 36% at warehouses and distribution centres and 17% at truck stops and fuel stations — the two places trailers most often sit unattended. Georgia accounted for around 4% of US cargo theft in that dataset.
Possibly, but we won't quote a figure. Every solar runtime specification we found came from a tracker vendor with no independent testing behind it. Solar supplements an internal battery rather than replacing it, and its contribution depends on panel orientation, soiling and seasonal light — all of which are consequences of how it's mounted.
We install trailer and asset tracking across Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, and we configure reporting frequency to match what the asset actually does rather than leaving defaults in place. If you've got trailers, containers or site equipment you'd struggle to locate today, call us and describe how they move — that determines both the hardware and the settings.
Get a free quote from API Signal → or call/text 803-513-1009. We install across Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, and we come to your yard.
We install GPS, cameras and telematics across GA, SC & NC — at your yard, on your schedule.