JANUARY 31, 2010, 6:52 P.M. ET
Heists Targeting Truckers On Rise
Robberies Are “Wreaking Havoc” on U.S. Highways, Endangering Consumers
By JENNIFER LEVITZ / The Wall Street Journal
Thieves are swiping tractor-trailers filled with goods, triggering a spike in cargo theft on the nation’s highways.
Over five days last month, an 18-wheeler carrying 710 cartons of consumer electronics was stolen from a Pennsylvania rest stop, a 53-foot-long rig packed with 43,000 pounds of paper was ripped off in Ottawa, Ill., and a 40-foot-long truck filled with reclining armchairs went missing in Atlanta.
Truckloads containing $487 million of goods were stolen in the U.S. in 2009, a 67% increase over the $290 million worth of products swiped a year earlier. Thieves stole 859 truckloads in 2009, up from 767 loads in 2008 and 672 in 2007, according to FreightWatch International, an Austin, Texas-based supply-chain security firm that maintains a database of thefts that several government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, look to for trends.
“In the past two months, we’ve just seen such an increase that it’s to the point where criminals are just wreaking havoc,” said Sandor Lengyel, a detective sergeant and squad leader in New Jersey State Police’s cargo-theft unit. “They’ll pretty much steal anything.” Cargo thieves ripped off $28 million in goods in New Jersey in 2009, an 87% spike from the $15 million stolen in 2008, he said.
Law-enforcement authorities in Illinois, California and Pennsylvania are among several agencies and industry groups also reporting a spike.
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California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Illinois and New Jersey are the top states for number of cargo thefts, according to FreightWatch. The crooks are targeting such things as electronics, food and beverages, clothing, pharmaceuticals and cigarettes.
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Electronics were the target of a thief who struck near midnight on Jan. 13 at a minimart in Hazleton, Pa., two hours north of Philadelphia. A trucker hauling $500,000 of electronics to an Amazon.com Inc. distribution center left his trailer parked there while he made another delivery elsewhere, said Trooper Charles Everdale III, of the Pennsylvania’s State Police auto-theft task force. When the trucker returned the trailer was gone, the trooper said. He said the partially empty trailer turned up in recent days in Palm Beach, Fla. Amazon declined to comment.
In the pharmaceutical industry, “most everyone has had some type of cargo theft” with a spike in “high-value loads” stolen over the last two years, said Chuck Forsaith, the director of supply-chain security for a unit of Purdue Pharma LP, a privately held pharmaceutical company in Stamford, Conn., and also director of the Pharma Cargo Security Coalition, an industry group.
Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com
