Highway helps Circle Logistics stop $100,000 copper theft attempt

Highway, the leading provider of Carrier Identity® solutions, partnered with Circle Logistics (“Circle”), a leading third-party logistics (3PL) provider, to strengthen carrier verification, reduce manual fraud work, and ultimately prevent a $100,000 cargo theft attempt involving a high-value copper shipment.

Circle Logistics, a top 40 freight brokerage moving more than 300,000 loads annually, confirmed it needed a faster, more consistent way to verify carriers as fraud tactics grew more sophisticated and manual checks slowed operations.

“Fraud tactics have evolved to exploit identity gaps that appear after a carrier is already booked,” said Michael Grace, VP of Customer Risk Management at Highway. “Teams need visibility across every touchpoint, not just at onboarding or booking.”

“Before Highway, we didn’t have the data points we needed to truly know who we were working with,” said Andrew Smith, Senior Vice President at Circle Logistics. “There were a lot of things we didn’t have visibility into with identity, and Highway fixed that for us by bringing all the identity data together in one place.”

Circle implemented Highway to strengthen carrier onboarding, compliance, and fraud prevention, using the platform to verify who a carrier is, how it operates, and whether it should be trusted on a load. Through Highway, Circle gained access to real-time verification signals, including insurance and authority status, ELD insights, digital footprint data, and behavioral alerts. The company also replaced a manual “contact verification” process that previously required 30 employees with continuous, automated monitoring.

As a result, the leading 3PL successfully stopped about 90% of fraud attempts soon after adoption and addressed a tactic in which bad actors impersonate legitimate carriers to obtain booking information. To further reduce that risk, Circle integrated Highway’s SSO verification layer into its workflow. Instead of sending rate confirmations directly, the company sends a Transport Pro-generated URL that requires carriers to authenticate through Highway before booking or accessing load details. Circle described the step as the “last 10%” needed to secure each touchpoint.

In addition, the case study describes an attempted theft tied to a high-value copper shipment. Circle said the load was booked with a verified carrier, but the carrier’s identity was compromised between booking and pickup. After loading, the driver emailed the bill of lading, and Highway for Email flagged the message as not coming from the legitimate carrier on file. The result was an alert that gave the team time to intervene before the freight moved.