Marsha Blackburn says organized crime has turned cargo theft into a growing threat across Tennessee, where billions of dollars in goods move by truck, train, plane and ship every day. Memphis sits at the center of that network, and the same freight lanes that keep products moving have become targets for coordinated theft rings.
The FBI says cargo theft has surged nationwide in recent years as criminal enterprises have become more sophisticated and more coordinated. In Tennessee, those losses have already reached millions of dollars, and the damage lands far beyond the stolen shipment itself: manufacturers face production delays, retailers struggle to keep shelves stocked, and farmers and food producers absorb costly disruptions before consumers pay more.
Memphis and the freight network
Memphis is home to one of the world's busiest cargo hubs and is a critical link in America's supply chain network. The city has the busiest cargo airport in the U.S., five Class I railroads, the third busiest trucking corridor and the fifth largest inland port, a concentration that makes it efficient for freight and attractive to thieves using fraudulent identities, fictitious trucking companies, cyber-enabled fraud and coordinated networks.
Those methods stretch across multiple states and often beyond U.S. borders, which means the theft problem is not limited to one yard, warehouse or roadway. Criminal organizations have targeted trucks, rail shipments, warehouses and distribution centers throughout Tennessee, turning a system built for speed into one that can be manipulated with paperwork, false identities and remote coordination.
CORCA and federal enforcement
Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty co-sponsored the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, known as CORCA. The proposal would give federal law enforcement stronger tools to investigate, coordinate and dismantle the organized criminal enterprises responsible for cargo theft and organized retail crime, giving investigators a broader way to connect cases that now move across state lines and through different freight channels.
For businesses in Tennessee, that matters in practical terms: one stolen load can interrupt a production line, delay replenishment for a store, or force a farmer or food producer to absorb a shipment failure before customers ever see the missing goods. The cargo hub that keeps freight moving quickly is also the place where a well-run theft network can do the most damage with the least visibility.
What Tennessee businesses face
The FBI’s warning and the CORCA push point to the same problem: cargo theft is no longer a one-off loss tied to a single truck or warehouse. It is increasingly organized, cross-border in its methods and built to exploit the scale of Tennessee’s freight system, which makes each successful theft more likely to ripple into shortages, delays and higher prices.
Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty are pressing for a federal response built around investigation and coordination rather than isolated enforcement after the fact. How much cargo theft has cost Tennessee businesses and consumers overall is not stated, but the pressure is already visible in the freight lanes that move the state’s goods every day.
