Ghost Carriers & The Billion Dollar Fraud

By Tom Fairhall

I was driving my lorry when I heard it on the news.

"UK logistics industry loses £1.2 billion annually to cargo theft and ghost carrier fraud."

A ghost carrier is exactly what it sounds like: a fake haulage company that exists only on paper. They accept loads, collect payment, and disappear. Your cargo ends up on eBay. Or in a container to Eastern Europe. Or just... gone.

I knew this was a problem. I just didn't know it was this big.

How the Scam Works

Fraudster creates a legitimate-looking haulage company
They register on load boards (the marketplaces where freight gets matched to carriers)
They undercut everyone on price
They collect the goods and vanish
The shipper is out the cargo. The broker's reputation is destroyed. The police don't care.

The current verification system is a joke. You can register a haulage company with nothing more than an Operator's Licence number. Nobody checks if it's real. Nobody checks if the driver matches the company. Nobody checks anything until the cargo is gone.

The Fix I Built

LoadShield is a trust verification layer for UK logistics.

It works like this:

Carrier Verification — We cross-reference Operator Licence data, Companies House records, and driver credentials in real-time.
Anomaly Detection — New carriers with no track record bidding 20% below market? Flagged instantly.
Trust Scoring — Every carrier builds a reputation score based on completed loads, verified documents, and shipper reviews.
Instant Alerts — If something doesn't match, you know before the goods leave your warehouse.

It's not complicated. It's just that nobody in logistics is thinking about software. They're thinking about diesel prices.

Why I Built It

I run a haulage business. My drivers are family.

When a ghost carrier scam hits, it doesn't just hurt the company that lost the cargo. It makes every legitimate haulier look suspicious. Insurance goes up. Trust goes down. The whole industry suffers.

I built LoadShield because I was tired of cleaning up someone else's mess.

The Opportunity

LoadShield is live. It works. It's ready for a partner who understands logistics and can sell this to the freight brokers who need it.

If that's you, let's talk.

"The best defense against fraud isn't more paperwork. It's better software."