For the Taking

Kim Richardson runs a well-known school for truck drivers in Caledonia, Ont. He offers a rigorous program that attracts high-caliber students. But lately Richardson’s recruits give new meaning the phrase: they’re Ontario Provincial Police officers. “We primarily were trained to recover the stolen trailers, as well as from time to time we may use the tractor trailer units as surveillance-type vehicles,” says OPP Constable Neil Candy, who earned his licence after training at Kim Richardson Transportation Specialists last year. “When you know more about the operation of the vehicle, it helps you during an investigation involving one.”

The handful of trained officers will likely be used in cargo-theft patrols like the one that tracked down and recovered
$3 million of stolen goods in September. That task force, named Operation Wolf, involved officers from Toronto, York, Peel, OPP and RCMP and has laid 147 charges since July for theft of trailers and goods inside.

If there’s an epicentre to the surging earthquake of cargo and equipment thefts bedeviling Canada’s truckers, it’s the Regional Municipality of Peel west of Toronto, a reflection of the significant amount of trucking conducted there.

But Peel also has one of Canada’s few police teams specifically targeting truck and cargo thieves. The list of loads missing in the area goes beyond cigarettes, alcohol, and tires-the “Big Three” of hot commodities. It includes full trailers of skin lotion, fruit cocktail, rolls of bleached paper, blue jeans, noodles, photocopiers, dog food, Zip-loc freezer bags, frozen meat pies, refrigerators, coffee, chocolate, and more.

“These gangs will steal anything,” notes Peel Regional Police Det. Bob MacLachlan. “There’s a black market for just about any kind of product. People don’t realize how easy it is for grocery-store-type items to get infiltrated into the legitimate wholesale system. And, of course, there’s also flea markets, where a lot of items get fenced, too.”

Some products aren’t as easy to unload as one might think. Appliances or electronic equipment such as televisions, stereos, microwaves, VCRs, computers, and the like all carry serial numbers and other identifying marks. “We can even trace goods such as foodstuffs, if they have a product code on each container,” MacLachlan adds. “The key is for shippers to keep records of what serial numbers apply to a given shipment. Some firms are good about this, and others are too lax.”

MacLachlan says mistakes are repeated over and over. A driver arrives late and finds the receiver’s location either closed or otherwise unwilling to accept delivery. He drops the loaded trailer in a yard with minimal or no security. There’s confusion over the delivery status and whereabouts of the unit. These factors make the cargo inside easy prey.

Making matters worse, often thieves aren’t severely punished.

“We had a case in Montreal several years ago regarding a cargo theft of $4.5 million worth of garments,” recalls Don Bick, a private investigator and former police officer based in Mississauga, Ont. “We caught the thieves, and the ringleader told me, ‘You haven’t seen anything yet. Why should we rob banks-where you can get a 10-year sentence for a job that might get you $4000 or $5000-when the penalties for stealing cargoes are so light? If we steal a truck and load worth $500,000, you only get six months in jail.’ ”

More often than not, a savvy thief doesn’t have to steal the truck or trailer in order to nab the cargo inside. He’s working with someone at the company handling the freight.
Two common techniques for stealing freight involve “leakage” and “recooping.”

Leakage describes the theft of goods from trucks, trailers, and docks. It can be anything from kids snatching cartons off the back of a truck while a driver makes a storefront delivery to highly organized crews, complete with specialized tools and surveillance skills.

Of course, the crews do the most damage. Most consist of five or six individuals with a rented cube truck. Sometimes they work like hunters seeking targets, roaming truck stops and other places where drivers might sleep in their trucks. They’ll even go after trucks parked on highway ramps.
They know how to quickly open up the trailer to see if there’s anything of interest inside. If so, they offload as much as possible into their van and then take off. They tape chain-cutters and other tools of their trade under the truck hood or chassis so police won’t notice them in a routine pullover.

Often, specific targets are chosen ahead of time. Crew members may have watched a terminal or warehouse and noted the routine. One might go in and apply for work in order to get a closer look at security systems. This sort of crew frequently hits truck terminals where they go through loaded equipment looking for valuables in a practice called “trailer shopping.”

Another sort of leakage involves driver complicity, and is especially prevalent in the container cartage business. In this scenario, the driver, frequently an owner-operator, pulls a container out of a port but meets a crew before delivery. They open the doors without breaking seals or they substitute phony seals when they’re done.

If there is visible damage to the container door, they cover their tracks using spray paints in the prevailing colors of trailers and cargo containers, touching up around the door so no one is aware of the theft until the container is opened at its destination. By that time, the goods are on the move and responsibility is hard to establish.

It is also difficult to detect where in a transportation chain “recooping” might have taken place. Recooping is the practice of opening an individual carton for a share of the contents. Typically a thief targets high-value items such as perfume, cameras, or small electronics. He slits open the bottom of a carton, removes some merchandise, and fills the empty spot with rolled up paper. Then he reseals the carton and places it back in the flow. Recoopers are hard to catch because the loss isn’t discovered until the carton is opened at its final destination. By then, it has usually passed through many hands.

Of course, recooping is an inside job, perpetrated by someone working with the freight, usually an employee. There are varied kinds and levels of employee involvement: at one end is the individual recooper, siphoning off a small but steady stream of valuable cargo; at the other end is the company executive who feeds information to outside crews.

More typically, the insider is a clerk, a dockworker, or even a security guard-anyone who knows which valuable freight is on what trailer. They earn a cut of the proceeds simply by identifying juicy loads for the crews, which actively recruit inside employees.

It’s simplistic to tell fleets to hire good, trustworthy people. Many employers are so anxious to hire drivers and move freight they overlook reference checks. But when they actually catch someone stealing, they may be reluctant to press charges. It’s a hassle, and there’s at least the possibility of having to provide testimony. It’s easier to simply fire the bad guy and go back to work. The fired employee, meantime, usually goes down the street to the next carrier. That situation is unlikely to improve until employers are willing to prosecute offenders and judges are willing to put them away.