Would I be a mad man to break into a trailer I dropped to get my straps back?

You need prior approval to break the seal from who ever owns the freight.
Edit: you may want this in writing and have someone sign for it. Just a heads up.

Running without straps is a bad idea if the freight is not tightly packed together to avoid load shift, to avoid freight damaging trailer, to avoid causing a major accident.

Worse case scenario, keep the receipt, upload copy of it to a hard drive, write it off at end of year. Hold copy for x number of years.

 

I would just tell the company you need 2 more and to give you a comcheck for them. Used to do that on Budweiser loads. They required straps. If I knew I didnt have any before going in I would stop and get 2. Went through probably 30 pairs of straps in 2 years. As long as I had receipts company didnt care.

 

If the load gets rejected because of the broken seal it's on you.