Yard-management video and computer-vision records helped a top-five U.S. grocer connect five short-shipped loads of cheese to a single truck and driver, supporting a claim to recover roughly $60,000 in missing product.

YMX Logistics detailed the case in a Sept. 18 case study. Five loads of cheese moved from a Minnesota supplier to the retailer's Arizona distribution facility, and each repeatedly arrived with fewer pallets than the purchase orders listed. The retailer's investigators knew the supplier and the lanes but initially could not identify which carriers or drivers had handled the freight.

That is where the yard data came in. YMX said its team searched the yard-management system using the shipment information, identified the carriers that had run the lanes, and pulled gate video from the relevant dates. The footage showed the trailers and drivers tied to the shipments, letting investigators link all five loads to one specific truck and driver.

YMX could not discuss who the claim targeted or its outcome.

Who is the retailer?

YMX declined to name the customer but described it as one of the five largest grocers in the U.S., with more than $145 billion in fiscal 2025 sales and more than 2,000 stores across over 30 states. The Arizona facility in the case study handles about 600 to 800 truck movements per day. The grocer is piloting YMX's yard operating system at distribution sites; the company did not disclose how many DCs it operates or where the other pilot facilities sit.

The mechanics are straightforward. Cameras at the gate record trucks entering and leaving the facility. Machine-learning software extracts license plates, trailer numbers and carrier details — even reading carrier logos when the name is not clearly visible, according to YMX. The result is a searchable digital record of truck movements that investigators can query after a problem surfaces.

The system layers in additional yard data, including cameras mounted on the hostler trucks that move trailers around the site. Those cameras record where and when trailers are dropped at dock doors, creating a full trace of a trailer's path from gate to dock.

What the video did not prove

The evidence has limits. Because the cameras sit at the retailer's facility, the footage established which trucks and drivers delivered the loads and when they entered the yard — not where the pallets went missing or who removed them. The shortages could have occurred at loading by the supplier, in transit, or after arrival at the retailer's site.

For cargo-security teams, that distinction matters. The records reconstruct a shipment's path once it reaches a facility, which is particularly useful when a shortage is only discovered at destination — but they do not by themselves assign blame along the chain of custody.

How big is the theft problem?

The case lands against a backdrop of rising losses, even as incident counts fall. Verisk CargoNet recorded 677 theft incidents in the U.S. and Canada in the second quarter, down 26% year over year, yet estimated losses more than doubled to $304.6 million, driven by high-value metals and technology heists.

Food and beverage freight has been hit especially hard. CargoNet logged 708 food and beverage thefts in 2025, up 47% from the prior year — the largest increase among the commodity categories it tracks. Across all commodities, estimated cargo theft losses reached nearly $725 million in 2025, up 60% from 2024.

YMX is not alone in turning data and automated monitoring against theft. FreightWaves recently reported on Wiliot's ambient IoT technology, which uses item-level sensors to flag potential theft, diversion and handling problems as freight moves through the supply chain.

For shippers and their insurers, the commercial logic is simple: an auditable, timestamped record of every truck, trailer and dock move turns a he-said-she-said shortage claim into evidence. Carriers and forwarders operating into large retail DCs should expect that visibility to work in both directions — exonerating clean operators as often as it implicates problem ones.

The pilot footprint is expanding. The grocer is now testing the system at two facilities, and another food distributor has begun trialing it at one location, YMX said — a sign that yard-level computer vision is moving from pilot novelty toward standard practice as food-sector theft losses climb.