A trailer left the yard six hours ago and never checked in. It's 1 a.m., the driver isn't answering, and the shipper just realized the broker won't take this call.
Every hour that passes makes the freight harder to find, and most shippers aren't big enough for a broker's speed dial. Google puts your firm in front of them the night it happens. LinkedIn puts you in front of the insurers and brokers who refer this work. We never mail shippers cold.
A dispatcher calls a shipper at 1 a.m.: the trailer that left the yard six hours ago never checked in, the driver isn't answering, and the load is worth more than the truck carrying it. The shipper's first instinct is to call the broker and wait. But the broker already has a firm on speed dial for their biggest accounts, and this shipper isn't one of them. So the shipper searches, tonight, while the freight might still be findable.
Skip tracing locates a missing person or a moved asset and lives on its own page on the high-stakes-recovery hub. This page is freight that was stolen: a trailer, a container, a load, gone between pickup and delivery.
The theft is already a search by the time it matters
Cargo recovery has always arrived through brokers, carriers, insurers, and the occasional trade-press story about a hijacking. A firm that already has the broker's cell phone number gets that call. But the shipper whose trailer disappeared last night is not on that broker's client list, and neither is the 3PL managing a smaller account. They are deciding, tonight, whether to wait on someone else to act or find a specialist themselves.
Shipper, 3PL, or carrier with a load gone missing tonight
Freight vanished between pickup and delivery, and every hour that passes makes recovery less likely, so they search immediately rather than wait on a broker relationship they don't have.
Insurer, broker, or security manager who refers this work
Wants a firm that actually recovers freight and pursues subrogation, not one that only writes a report for the claim file.
A 20-minute call is enough to determine fit. We will tell you directly if the program does not make sense for what you do. Arrange it here.
What a buyer is actually searching
The shipper or 3PL types cargo theft recovery, stolen load recovery, hijacked trailer, cargo theft investigator, the same night the load disappears. They are not comparing a panel of vendors for next year's contract. They are deciding, tonight, whether to wait on the broker or act now while the freight might still exist to find.
Insurers, brokers, and security managers search differently and on a different clock, often after the claim has already been filed rather than in the first frantic hours. Those are different queries with different urgency, and they belong on the LinkedIn side of this campaign rather than the Google side built for the shipper searching at midnight.
Objections we hear
Insurance will handle it. Insurance pays what the policy pays. Recovering the actual freight is a different job, and the insurer is often the one hoping someone else does it well.
We'll wait on the broker. The broker may already have a firm for their biggest accounts. They may also be the reason a smaller shipper is left searching alone at midnight.
We'll handle it in-house. Some security teams can. The ones searching tonight do not have that bench available right now.
Fictitious pickup, hijack, and a missing yard trailer are different fact patterns
Last-known location, ELD and GPS pings, and whether the load still exists to recover are the first questions in any of them, and the answers change what a firm should even be searching for. Insurers generally want recovery and subrogation. Security managers want the freight back and a process that keeps it from happening again. Brokers sit in the middle, sometimes the referral source and sometimes the reason a shipper had nowhere else to turn.
A live theft is worth the ad spend. A shortage claim from last year is usually an insurance dispute, not a recovery deployment, and a firm that only writes reports for the claim file is a different service than one that actually chases moving freight. The shipper searching at 1 a.m. cannot always tell which firm they've found from the page alone, so the page has to say plainly which job the firm actually does.
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What runs, and what we will not do
Google ads built around the specific search a shipper or 3PL types in the hours after a theft, not one generic "investigation" campaign competing for every unrelated query in the category. Foundational web presence, so the click lands on a firm that reads as freight-recovery specialists, not an investigation mill.
LinkedIn placements aimed at insurers, brokers, and security managers, run as material worth their time, not a message sequence. Paid ads only, never InMail, connection-request sequences, or direct messages. We do not run that channel, and it is not part of this program under any name.
What we will not do: mail every shipper in a corridor. We do not build a solicitation list of shippers or 3PLs, and we do not write, mail, or phone a company that has not searched or asked. We make the firm findable. The firm recovers the freight.
Why a generalist agency gets this practice wrong
Most agencies will not take the time to learn how a cargo recovery practice actually gets sold, because the practice is specialized, the file count is small, and understanding it does not scale the way a bigger ad budget does. They want volume regardless of what it turns into, and a campaign built for volume buys shortage claims and old inventory misses instead of live thefts.
This campaign is built around the buyer with a load that just moved and a real window to recover it, not the browser researching cargo insurance in the abstract.
Referring insurers and brokers matter as much as the search itself
A meaningful share of this work still arrives through an insurer pursuing subrogation or a broker who cannot cover every account personally. That relationship deserves deliberate attention, not whichever firm happens to come up when someone finally asks around.
The LinkedIn side of this program exists for that purpose: a small number of paid placements in front of insurers, brokers, and security managers, built as material on what a real recovery deployment looks like, not an ad asking for a meeting.
How this is billed
This is Visibility Program work, not the outbound program. You pay ad spend directly to the platforms, Google and, where it runs, LinkedIn. ROI Wire bills a retainer that scales with that spend, not a flat project fee and not a percentage of closed files.
A landing page may be included at no additional cost. A full website build is always quoted and billed separately. Copywriting, directory work, and the reputation surfaces a shipper or an insurer checks before trusting a firm with a live theft sit under this track as the credibility layer that holds the traffic, not as a correspondence program running in parallel. Ads can be live in under a week. Approval on your side, the keywords, the spend, the page the click lands on, usually determines the timeline, not the platforms.
Who this fits, and who it does not
This fits firms that actually recover stolen freight, not general investigators who will "look into it." The lead worth the spend is a live theft: a shipper, 3PL, carrier, or insurer with a load that just moved.
It does not fit a firm that wants to mail every shipper in a corridor, and it does not fit a year-old shortage claim or a warehouse inventory miss, which is usually an insurance fight rather than a recovery deployment. That is not skip tracing either, which locates a person or a moved asset rather than recovering freight in transit, and lives on its own page.
A theft isn't on anyone's calendar. Search has to already be on before the trailer goes missing.
Google ads for the shipper searching tonight. LinkedIn ads for insurers, brokers, and security managers. Never a letter to a company that hasn't asked.
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