The holiday season comes with both opportunity and pressure for distribution centers. Order volume rises, schedules tighten, and yard business increases. The surge in activity creates an opening for opportunistic criminals to strike, especially those who understand how holiday workloads strain security personnel and systems. Busy yards and increased carrier traffic introduce blind spots that are easy to miss in the rush to move freight during the holidays.
Thieves plan ahead and watch for predictable patterns, overcrowded lots, and moments when teams shift focus to meet shipment deadlines. A multi-layered security strategy helps overhaul piecemeal security setups, replacing them with a cohesive approach. Stronger perimeter protection, tighter access control, and better visibility work together to block potential entry points that thieves tend to target.
Why Holiday Rush Increases Theft Vulnerability
As distribution centers and warehouses prepare for the holiday surge starting around Thanksgiving, many pressures combine to increase the risk of theft. According to CargoNet, the 2024 Thanksgiving period saw a 64.58% increase from the previous year in stolen cargo. The average loss value during the winter holiday period, from December 23 to January 2, amounted to $360,528 per incident. Here are the key factors that make facilities especially vulnerable during this time period:
- Seasonal staffing: Many operations expand their payroll to meet demand, bringing in temporary, often less-experienced workers or reallocating full-time staff to new roles. Expedited onboarding can lead to inconsistent security protocols and gaps in oversight.
- More inventory: Holiday peaks bring higher volumes, a combination of high-value goods such as electronics and household items, and faster stock turnover. This makes each incident more costly, and the fast pace provides criminals with more opportunities to act before being detected.
- Constant traffic: During the holiday season, yards fill up with more trailers, carriers arrive and depart quickly, and day and night operations intensify, leaving dock doors open for longer periods. These conditions often create blind spots, particularly when equipment is left unattended, and give thieves the chance to exploit congestion or take advantage of shift changes.
The Power of Proactive Security Measures
While technology like GPS tracking may help you recover stolen cargo if you’re lucky, ultimately the goal should be to stop theft at the perimeter, before a trailer has a chance to leave the yard.
Proactive perimeter security measures prevent incidents from happening by stopping theft before it starts. This loss prevention strategy helps protect your bottom line, reduce inventory shrinkage, and foster customer trust by demonstrating your business’s commitment to protecting assets while they await distribution.
Common Holiday Theft Tactics to Recognize
Holiday activities at your distribution center create predictable pressure points that thieves watch closely. With a sharp rise in organized criminal activity targeting cargo and warehouses, including coordinated trailer theft, a peak-season increase is inevitable. As thieves track seasonal operating patterns, they may strike using any of the following tactics:
- After-hours perimeter breaches: Even with extended schedules, distribution centers often have uneven security coverage after dark. Criminals take advantage by scouting fence lines, monitoring shift transitions, and identifying where lighting leaves shadows.
- Targeting unattended trailers: Freight-heavy seasons result in more loaded trailers being staged across yards or in overflow lots. Organized theft groups focus on these unoccupied assets, removing high-value cargo in small batches to avoid detection.
- Fictitious pickups and driver impersonation: Identity-based cargo theft is a real concern. Criminals forge federal registration documents or use spoof carrier databases to appear legitimate during busy seasons to collect loads.
- Exploiting yard congestion for cover: Crowded yards provide thieves with natural camouflage. Criminals may stage a truck near dock doors, trail staff movements, or slip into lanes during peak congestion times.
A Multi-Layered Holiday Theft Prevention Plan for Commercial Properties
Holiday theft requires a proactive perimeter defense strategy. A multi-layered approach works best because it strengthens vulnerabilities, reduces blind spots, and forces intruders to move on to another target with fewer barriers to overcome. When each layer supports the next, distribution centers get a meaningful advantage during the busiest and riskiest season of the year.
Secure Your Perimeter
High demand, staffing shortages, and seasonal congestion create opportunities for criminals to gain access to your property. An electric fence is both a physical and psychological deterrent, stopping theft before it happens. The presence of the fence and clear yellow warning signs indicate that your site is well-protected. If a would-be intruder attempts to breach The Electric Guard Dog™ Fence, they receive a safe but memorable shock. The fence meets American and international safety standards, including ANSI/CPLSO 60355-2-76-2020, IEC 60335-2-76, and ASTM F3296-19.
Monitor Movement
Large yards and peak-season activity can create blind spots that thieves attempt to take advantage of. Video surveillance cameras are essential for eliminating these blind spots and capturing footage of suspicious activity. While the presence of cameras alone isn’t enough to deter crime, it’s important to have eyes on your merchandise and your personnel at all times.
FORTIFEYE™ combines electric fencing, video surveillance, and video monitoring. If a threat is deemed to be credible, the monitoring team will call and dispatch law enforcement to your distribution center.
Control Access
A higher volume of holiday freight brings a sharp increase in driver arrivals, contractor activity, and short-term visitors. Without strong access control, a gate can become the most vulnerable point in your perimeter. With Gate Access Control, you can safeguard all entry and exit points, maintaining smooth traffic flow while minimizing the risk of unauthorized entry.
The system maintains a digital log, simplifying audits and enabling teams to track movement. During the holidays, when temporary staffing increases, this automation helps protect people, parked trailers, loaded goods, and operational equipment.
Illuminate Key Areas
Poor lighting is a common vulnerability in distribution centers during the holidays. Shorter days and more hours of darkness can create potential hiding places and lead to slow response times. Perimeter alarm-based lighting integrates with your electric fence, flooding the area with light when the fence goes into alarm. Options like Zone Fence Lighting, Spot Lighting, and Sentinels can be strategically placed to eliminate shadows where thieves can hide.
Secure Your Distribution Center With AMAROK
Distribution centers that prepare for seasonal theft proactively can protect their schedules, inventory, customer relationships, and employee safety. A multi-layered perimeter security strategy reduces the opportunities that criminals can take advantage of during this busy period. These layers work together to help you stay ahead of holiday theft surges and keep high-value cargo moving without disruption.
AMAROK is an industry-leading provider of perimeter security solutions. We start with a free risk assessment that takes into account existing vulnerabilities at your distribution center as well as local crime trends. Over 8,000 sites across the United States and Canada trust AMAROK with their perimeter security.
Contact us to schedule your free threat assessment and see how AMAROK helps organizations like yours prevent 99% of external theft after installation.
