How to Hijack a Ride (and Why Load Boards Make It Too Easy)

Let’s start with a story from Germany.

Back in the ’90s, if you were a broke student like yours truly, and needed to get from Hamburg to Berlin on a Wednesday (because your physics prof moved the exam), you didn’t buy a train ticket (too expensive). You looked for a ride.

Here’s how it worked: You sent in a request to a printed bulletin — a literal magazine. If someone happened to be going your way, they’d respond. They’d pick you up. You’d split gas. You’d chat about Marx, or punk rock, or 2pac’s European influence.

It was called a Mitfahrzentrale. And it kind of worked.

But let’s be honest: if someone wanted to kidnap you, this was a golden opportunity. There was no identity verification. No secure app. Just a stranger in a car.

Fast forward to 2024 — and this is still how most freight moves.

Freight’s Still Using Bulletin Boards

Load boards are public. Anyone can see what’s moving, where it’s going, and who’s moving it. And that means anyone can pretend to be someone else.

That’s the structural problem.

A recent CNBC documentary on cargo theft outlined exactly how it happens:

• A bad actor scrapes a load from a board
• Spoofs a carrier identity using stolen documents
• Fakes communication and shows up at the dock
• Takes the freight, never to be seen again

Sound familiar? It’s like TSA asking you to verify pilot IDs — if you already got access to the uniform and schedule, the ID check is just theatre.

And here’s the kicker: even when we plug the holes (secure passwords, better documents, two-factor authentication), it’s still built on a system designed for public browsing.

It’s like trying to secure your Uber ride after you tweet your pickup time and street corner.

You Couldn’t Hijack Me — and That’s the Point

If you wanted to hijack me on my way home from a night out, you’d need to:

1. Know that I ordered a ride.
2. Know exactly when and where.
3. Know which app I used.
4. Get there before the real driver.
5. Hope I’m too tipsy to tell a Prius from a Dodge Ram.

Pretty hard, right?

Now contrast that with a load board:

• The load is public
• The carrier is visible
• The pickup location and time are listed
• The communication happens outside the system

So yeah — theft happens.

The Fix: No More Public Listings

At Admiral Freight, we don’t just secure cargo. We prevent strategic theft by replacing public boards with private matching.

• Only the matched carrier and shipper can see the load.
• No external communication.
• No spoofable info.

And we go one better:

• No back and forth.
• No email threads.
• Just one-click booking, based on rates, preferences, and readiness.

Because seriously — when was the last time you had to text your Uber driver 47 times to coordinate a ride home?

Structural problems need structural solutions.

If your system makes it easy for the wrong people to know where to be, when to be there, and what to say — then patching the edges won’t save you.

Rebuild the system. Start with trust. Or at least, don’t base it on a 1990s magazine.