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By Keith Goble, Land Line state legislative editor | Friday, February 17, 2017
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Efforts in Mississippi and New Mexico, which are intended to deter the theft of truck, rail or container cargo through stiff punishment, have cleared hurdles. ​Read Article

By  Bob Gatty Editor Convenience Distribution  Convenience Distribution Magazine Online
 

By Patrick McGovern | The Jersey Journal 


More than 10 years ago, Edward Mongon was sentenced to 13 years in prison as the leader of the highly organized "Conrail Boys," theft ring that netted more than $5 million in merchandise stolen from trains passing through North Jersey.

At the time, authorities thought they had ended the gang's 11-year crime spree, having convicted 24 people who they said were members of the gang.

Today Mongon was back in front of a judge, this time one of three men authorities say revived the Conrail Boys cargo theft gang. Four other men and a woman were charged as part of the ring and also appeared in Central Judicial Processing court.

Mongon, 40, of North Bergen, John Forcum, 37, of Parsippany, and Elie Kammo of Union City were charged with having more than $75,000 worth of stolen property in their possession, according to the criminal complaints.

Bail for Mongon and Forcum was set at $100,000 cash or bond; and Kammo's bail was set at $55,000 cash or bond bail by Judge Kelly Austin. Court officials say Forcum has 20 prior arrests in New Jersey. Electronic court records show that Mongon has multiple convictions dating back to the early 1990s.

Others charged today are Jersey City residents Denis Ford, 40, Amparo Diaz-Cruz, 45, Marciano Vazquez and Ramy Darwiche, 25; and Andrez Gonzalez, 56, of Cliffside Park.

It could not be immediately determined when Mongon was released from prison.

At the time of Mongon's sentencing, a spokesman for the state Division of Crimimal Justice called the Conrail Boys an "extensive, well-coordinated criminal cartel" that stole millions of dollars in merchandise and cash from freight trains in North Jersey.

In 2004 authorities described how gang's operation from 1992 to 2003:

Members of the gang would leap onto slow-moving trains and, using bolt cutters and other tools, break into the truck trailers and shipping containers that held merchandise.

The goods were thrown off the train onto the side of the tracks as the train continued moving. Accomplices on the ground gathered the stolen items and moved them to a secret collection point where they were sold to local fences.

Original Article

Interest in the growing logistics demon, commonly known as cargo theft, has risen in recent years accompanied by a significant increase in driver-involved thefts.

A new white paper from the logistics security services provider FreightWatch International reports last year truck cargo theft activity spiked in the final quarter of the year, with a total of 242 reported incidents. It reports driver theft reached an all high in 2013, increasing 76% over 2012 and a whopping 389% jump over 2011.

According to report, trucker theft is typically a crime of opportunity, taking place either directly by the driver, the driver’s voluntary collusion or complicity in the crime, or a deceptive criminal posing as a legitimate carrier resource.

“This growing trend, surreptitious drivers, warrants acute awareness as the shipping industry enters its peak season,” FreightWatch said.

The report also notes the last four months of the year frequently infuse the most risk for truck cargo thefts and is often brought about by the supply and demand put on transportation operations.

“Limitations on available carriers regularly necessitate brokering, as well as re-brokering to the second, third, and sometimes fourth order,” FreightWatch said. “Additionally, high-volume requirements, both in production and shipping, strain workers throughout the supply chain to meet the demands of customers and end-users. This pressure often results in security practices being overlooked or sometimes avoided altogether.”

Original Article 

Zachary T. Sampson, Times Staff Writer

Four years ago, thieves cut a hole in the roof of a military contractor’s warehouse in Hillsborough County and stole 3,000 laptops. It was the largest cargo theft in the county’s history.In 2012, thieves descended through the roof of an Eli Lilly warehouse in Connecticut and stole $80 million in prescription drugs that eventually were trucked to Florida. 

Four years ago, thieves cut a hole in the roof of a military contractor’s warehouse in Hillsborough County and stole 3,000 laptops. It was the largest cargo theft in the county’s history.In 2012, thieves descended through the roof of an Eli Lilly warehouse in Connecticut and stole $80 million in prescription drugs that eventually were trucked to Florida. 

ST. PETERSBURG — The best cargo thieves are expert planners. They are patient and precise and pull off million-dollar heists without pulling a gun.


They strike nearly anywhere cargo moves — rest stops, parking lots, warehouses.

Two weeks ago, bandits made off with 18 tons of Crisco from a tow lot in St. Petersburg. At first it was funny. Who needs $100,000 worth of shortening? But the FBI calls cargo theft a $30 billion a year problem, a sobering economic hit that can translate to higher retail prices.

"Cargo theft is a much bigger issue in America than anyone really believes," said Marion County sheriff's Detective Erik Dice, a member of a statewide theft task force.

The thieves particularly like Florida. The state accounted for nearly a quarter of the country's reported cargo thefts between March and May, according to the Florida Department of Transportation. Established rings of Cuban nationals move many of the stolen goods into the Miami area, a port region with ample warehouses and distributors for storing and selling the merchandise, experts said.

Keith Lewis, a vice president with the consultant CargoNet, laughed when told the truck with the missing Crisco ended up in Hialeah, less than 10 miles from Miami.

"I could have predicted that's where the truck was going to wind up," he said. "Empty in Hialeah or next to some fish farm in (nearby) Medley, Fla."

• • •

Cargo thieves target anything they can sell quickly — paper towels, color printers, prescription drugs. They often have buyers lined up in advance.

They will sit outside warehouses or distribution centers watching for patterns, learning which trucks carry what products and where they are going. When the targeted truck leaves the yard, the thieves may slap a GPS tracker on the trailer or simply follow it.

Eventually, a trucker has to stop for coffee or to use the restroom at a rest area. The driver climbs down from the cab, locks up and walks away. Then the thieves move. They break open a door, hot-wire the engine and drive off.

Sometimes the truck drivers are in on the deal and leave their vehicles set up for taking, said Miami-Dade police Sgt. Carlos Rosario, a member of a South Florida cargo theft task force that includes the FBI, the Florida Highway Patrol and other local agencies.

In Florida, many cargo thieves are part of close-knit Cuban theft rings, experts said.

"Cargo theft is an ethnic-based crime, and different crews stay within their groups," Lewis said. That means Cubans in Miami, Armenians in California, and Bosnians, Lithuanians, Russians and Czechs in the Midwest, he said.

In 2011, a group of cargo thieves well-versed in trucking logistics set up a bogus company to target Florida tomato shippers and brokers. The thieves even registered the Miami company with the Motor Carrier Safety Administration, according to reports at the time. They picked up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tomatoes and then disappeared.

Theirs was a new twist on cargo theft that Lewis said is increasingly common. Identity fraud is a natural companion to traditional grand theft, and more rings are trying similar fictitious pickups.

Another group pilfered $2.2 million of the cold and flu medicine Mucinex and $550,000 of Similac baby formula. A week after the Crisco caper, 44,000 pounds of Miller High Life was taken from a truck stop in Orange County. Authorities later found the stolen beer in South Florida.

Ed Petow, law enforcement liaison for the consultant FreightWatch International, described the organized rings currently working in Miami as relatively sophisticated. Even the Crisco theft was probably planned, Petow said.

"I don't know what you do with Crisco shortening . . . but obviously somebody's got a market for it," he said.

• • •

Finding stolen cargo is a race against the clock. Reporting the theft is step one, but even that's not always simple. If a trucker was sleeping when a rig was stolen or the truck was parked at a lot overnight, it could take hours before police even know to look for a missing semitrailer.

On some occasions, owners at trucking companies won't report the crime, fearing insurance rates will rise. Instead, they'll work directly with manufacturers and distributors to "just write the check and make the problem go away," Lewis said.

Along the highway, stolen semitrailers look the same as thousands of other trucks. In some cases, thieves drive a couple of hours, unload all the merchandise into another truck or storage space, and ditch the stolen rig.

On store shelves, stolen goods look the same as any other product.

"You can literally hide the stuff in plain sight," Rosario said.

Theft rings usually peddle stolen merchandise below wholesale value, though Rosario said the discount is hard to estimate and depends on the commodity.

Food stolen in Florida will usually remain in the state. Electronics that can be traced or tracked end up in South and Central America, packaged on boats or trucks, said Willie Morales, a former detective who investigated cargo theft for the Miami-Dade Police Department

In the Crisco case, Hialeah police found the stolen truck a day after the theft. The thieves had broken the passenger door and taken the driver's GPS, his food and even a spare container of engine oil, said Nermin Salihovic, owner of NS Express LLC, which hired the driver.

The missing Crisco? The criminals likely sold it to food brokers or independent store owners who like the discounted price and don't ask a lot of questions. The shortening's long shelf-life makes it even more valuable.

"It's being sold right now at mom-and-pop grocery stores, bodegas" around Miami, Lewis said.

"You're not going to see it at Publix," Morales said.

Even if authorities track down the stolen Crisco — something that experts agreed is unlikely — every bit of it may have to be recalled.

"Once these food products are out of the chain, what we call the supply chain, a lot of it has to be destroyed because you really don't know where it's been or how it's been kept," Morales said.

• • •

Cargo thieves do slip up, even in some of the highest-profile heists.

In 2012, a well-trained group descended through the roof into an Eli Lilly warehouse in Connecticut and stole about $80 million worth of drugs, which eventually were trucked to Florida. Investigators tracked down the thieves behind the record-breaking heist using a water bottle that one of the them had touched at the crime scene.

Four years ago, a cadre of thieves pulled off the largest cargo theft in the history of Hillsborough County. They cut a hole in the roof of a military contractor's warehouse and stole 3,000 laptop computers, then stashed the $7.4 million cache in an abandoned warehouse in Miami. Investigators identified the thieves after finding security footage that showed their getaway car at a nearby McDonald's.

The FDOT credits the formation of the Florida Commercial Vehicle & Cargo Theft Task Force in 2001 with helping cut losses over time. And from August 2013 to August of this year, the Miami-Dade Police Department recovered $5.2 million in merchandise, $138,000 in cash and other goods and about $600,000 worth of trucks and trailers, while also arresting 20 people, Rosario said.

Still, with so much cargo roaming the nation's roads and sitting in warehouses, it's hard to know when and where thieves will strike — just that they will, almost every day.

The crime leads to a rise in overhead costs for companies, which subsequently increases retail prices, putting the load squarely in the pockets of American consumers.

"It obviously affects the economy, whether it's the lack of product on the shelves or it's a rise in insurance rates" for truckers, said Petow of FreightWatch. "It's obviously got to trickle down somewhere."

Contact Zachary T. Sampson at zsampson@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8804. Follow @zacksampson.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

More than 200 cargo theft incidents occurred in the United States in the third quarter of the year, FreightWatch International reported Wednesday.

In the quarter, the organization recorded 194 194 Full-Truckload (FTL) cargo thefts and 14 Last-Mile Courier thefts for a total of 208 incidents in the U.S.

Seventy FTL thefts occurred in July, 76 in August, and 48 in September, and the average loss value per incident during the quarter was $321,521, according to FreightWatch.


Compared with the same quarter of 2013, the volume of thefts declines by 20%; however, the average loss value increased by 104%.

“The average loss-value ceiling continues to rise and illustrates that organized cargo thieves continue to aggressively target high value freight,” the organization said.

Food and drink accounted for 18% of all thefts, the most of any industry during the third quarter of this year, followed closely by electronics, at 17% of all thefts.

With 42 thefts, California was the state with the most incidents, followed by Florida, which accounted for 17% of all thefts.

Original Article

Grace M. Lavigne, Associate Web Editor 

Cargo theft is about to enter its busiest season, and motor carriers, in particular, are advised to be on guard.

According to FreightWatch International, theft activity in the U.S. in 2013 was concentrated in the fourth quarter with a total of 242 incidents. The greatest number of incidents occurred in late September just before the beginning of the holiday shipping season.

The U.S. has also seen a “significant” rise in driver theft incidents, which involve either direct theft by the driver, the driver’s voluntary collusion or complicity in the crime or a deceptive criminal posing as a legitimate carrier resource, FreightWatch said. This method of crime reached an all-time high in 2013, soaring 76 percent from 2012 and 389 percent from 2011.

“This growing trend – surreptitious driver – warrants acute awareness as the shipping industry enters its peak season,” FreightWatch said.

The driver turnover rate ― the rate at which drivers need to be replaced ― was 92 percent at large carriers in the first quarter, according to the American Trucking Associations’ latest quarterly Trucking Activity Report, which is a “huge” disadvantage and security risk to an organization’s supply chain, according to FreightWatch.

“Fictitious pickups continue to be a growing threat in our industry,” the analyst said. “The frequency of fictitious pickups increased sharply from 2011 to 2012, remained relatively constant in 2013, and have resumed a steep upward path during the first two quarters of 2014; 26 fictitious pickups have already been reported this year, totaling over $3.5 million in lost cargo.”

Forty percent of those incidents in 2014 targeted electronics and apparel, FreightWatch said. These low-risk, high-reward incidents continue to be relatively easy for the criminal to organize, while becoming increasingly painful for enterprises to endure. 

The peak season from July to September adds even more risk of cargo thefts to supply chains, as limitations on available carriers often necessitate brokering, according to the report. Logisticians, transporters and security professionals should be aware of the threats, as well as exercise due diligence when sourcing carriers and ensure that all participants in the supply chain comply with industry best practices.

“The organized criminal dedicates an inordinate amount of time to surveillance, preparation and rehearsals; we must dedicate ample resources to proactively combat this growing threat,” FreightWatch said.

From May through July, FreightWatch recorded 179 thefts in the U.S., with 66 thefts in May, 53 in June and 60 in July. The average loss per value per incident during the period was $151,174. Compared with the previous quarter, thefts decreased 12 percent, while the average loss value decreased 35 percent. Food and drinks were the product types most often stolen with 37 thefts or 21 percent of all incidents during the three-month period.

Contact Grace M. Lavigne at glavigne@joc.com and follow her on Twitter: @Lavigne_JOC.


Original Article

ST. PETERSBURG — A semitrailer truck stolen Sunday morning from a towing company was carrying approximately 36,000 pounds of Crisco sticks destined for delivery to a Publix distribution center in Lakeland, according to St. Petersburg Police Department reports.

The truck, a red 2005 Volvo with the Florida license tag 523 93P, had "NS Express LLC, Bowling Green, KY 42104" on both of the cab doors, police said; the trailer was a white Hyundai model with the Florida license tag 445 0PP. They were parked at Coastal Towing, 2390 118th Ave. N, at the time of the theft.

In addition, police said thieves broke into another trailer carrying boxes from the Amazon distribution center in Ruskin. A number of boxes were opened and their contents removed, but it was not immediately known what items were stolen.


Original Article

New report says Chicago remains a hot spot for cargo thefts in Illinois.

Illinois, and more specifically, the Chicago area, just won’t turn loose of its reputation for being one of the truck cargo theft crime capitals in the U.S., according to a new report.

The logistics security services provider FreightWatch International says in the second quarter of this year, Illinois ranked as the state with the fifth highest recorded cargo thefts.

“Illinois is a hotspot for cargo theft activity, particularly in the Chicago area. With theft rates and average values well above the national average within several product types, it is clear that organized cargo theft is active in this area,” the report said.

Examples of this include metals, the fifth most stolen product type since 2010, which is tied with the food/drinks category for the most stolen product type in Illinois during the same time frame.

Another standout is the average value for alcohol/tobacco thefts in the state, which at $773,963 is the highest value of any product type in Illinois, and 246% higher than the national average for this product category of thefts over the same time period.

It also noted auto/parts is the fourth most stolen product type in Illinois, while nationwide it's seventh. Clothing/shoes recorded an average value of $519,000 in the state, just over twice the average value of these thefts nationwide.

While theft of the entire trailer or container is the primary theft type in Illinois, as it is across the nation, with 84.9% in Illinois and 81% nationally, other theft types, such as deceptive pickups, facility burglary and driver theft and hijacking, happen at lower frequency in Illinois than nationally.

Original Article

Jeff Pearce 

Drugs get the big headlines: pot plantations out in BC; meth labs in your squeaky clean ‘burbs in Calgary. Even when trucking’s involved. Only two years ago, the Toronto Starreported on the lucrative cross-border drug smuggling trade via long-haul loads; one bust alone turned up 97 bricks of cocaine, worth more than $4 million. But here’s the thing: if you think about it, why should crooks bother at all with dope, when there’s so much legit merchandise to be ripped off?

Let’s go back to early May. The Auto/ Cargo Theft Unit of the York Regional Police get a tip and swoop in on multiple warehouses in Vaughan and Toronto, where thieves have stashed $1.4-million worth of stolen goods. The cops have to cart away 15 loads—count ‘em, 15—of merchandise: baby products, barbecues, household appliances, cleaning supplies, tools, forklifts, vehicle antifreeze, musical instruments, and not just the kind you can walk off with, like a guitar or clarinet, but an actual baby grand piano. Detective Sergeant Paul LaSalle of the York Regional Police has a good sense of humour, and he deadpans, “Yeah, we knew we’d get questions about the grand piano.”

In a way, the raids are a tribute to a new spirit of collaboration among law enforcement agencies, the insurance business and the trucking industry. It was a classic team effort, with Peel Regional Police assisting and the Ontario Trucking Association involved. Thanks in part to the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s cargo database, the cops were able to return most of the stolen goods to their legitimate owners.


It’s a significant win, given that cargo theft—whether from trucks or containers in a port—is an international problem. Roberto Saviano, the investigative journalist who now lives in hiding from the mafia, started his classic on organized crime, Gomorrah, not with a discussion of coke and heroin but how the port of Naples has a bursting black market in jeans, Barbies and plastic toys.

For Canada alone, the illegal haul is $5 billion a year, more than enough incentive for the IBC and the Canadian Trucking Alliance to expand their cargo theft reporting pilot program. Garry Robertson, national director of investigative services for IBC, says the program will be expanded out west. “I’ve already got some law enforcement agencies from the Western regions that are now interested. We will be doing that so that we can see: is the pattern [of thefts] that is happening in British Columbia, Alberta and across the Prairies the same pattern that we have in southern Ontario using the [Highway] 401 corridor between Windsor and Montreal? Or do we have another one?” He says the faster that information about load thefts can be put out in the media, the more tips will come back from the public.

The free flow of information wasn’t always there. Barry Peabody, a consultant in product management for SGI Canada in Regina, concedes that cargo theft is an issue that trucking firms are often embarrassed to talk about. “They have to admit it to the client, but they’re also looking at the image of their own company, and you know, if you’re hauling for 10 customers and you are publicly saying we’ve lost, for whatever reason, these commodities for this customer, the other nine customers are going to be sitting there thinking, hmmm.”

When Wheels Are Turning

In a climate of reticence, of course, the thieves can go merrily on. The obvious big-ticket bull’s eyes are Montreal, Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area. But, Peabody says what the bad guys want differs from year to year. While electronics used to be favourite items, they can be detected far easier these days and shut down remotely. “So what we’re starting to see are more common things getting stolen. Food and drink they can get sold relatively quickly, and most don’t have serial numbers on them. Somebody steals a flat of soft drinks, you’re not going to really ask, is this a stolen commodity? It doesn’t occur to you when you’re at a summer market somewhere and somebody’s selling bottles of cola for 75 cents less than what everybody else is selling them for.”

He says the risk in Eastern Canada is mainly to packaged consumer goods going through a wholesaler to the retailer. In the West, of course, a lot of base minerals, lumber, ore, grains and potash get shipped. The risk is lower “because of the nature of the commodity itself. Combined with the commodity is where it originates, because, you know, there’s an old saying in cargo insurance that freight at rest is freight at risk. What the idea there is, is if the wheels are turning, there hasn’t been a load stolen yet.”

“‘We’ve never picked up a load from you, we don’t know who you are, that wasn’t us.’ And then you realize that their identity has been stolen.”

A load that has to stop a dozen times before it can actually get out onto the highway has an inherent risk in each of those stops. Conversely, if you load some grain from an elevator and hit the road, your risk is less. But you can’t just look at what’s in the trailer—consider who’s behind the wheel. “When you’re shipping a commodity, the trucking company should be looking at the drivers themselves…. You’ve got to make sure that you’re checking their background, checking their previous employers. Would the previous employer rehire them, or are they glad they’re gone?”
If the targets for theft vary, so too can the perpetrators and their methods. Here in Canada, cargo theft may be one part of the “business portfolio” for hardcore violent criminals—infamous gangster Bindy Johal bribed drivers in Surrey to rip off their own loads, worth about $20,000 on the street in his day (Johal ended up fatally shot in the head in a Vancouver nightclub in 1998). But trucking loads can also be the prey of highly organized specialists. Garry Robertson knows this only too well. He was with Peel Regional Police for years as a detective in auto theft and left in the ‘90s to open a private investigation company with a colleague, dealing sometimes with cargo theft and insurance crime. For him, the faces of the villains haven’t changed that much over his career. “Quite honestly, there are still players that I dealt with back then that are still around today.”

In the U.S., the thieves tend to work in groups of five to 20, according to Scott Cornell, national director of Travelers Investigative Services Specialty Investigations Group in Hartford, Connecticut.

Cornell says most cargo theft in the States remains a crime of opportunity; it’s not the fastest growing way, but still the most common. “How do they know what’s in it? Well, first answer is, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you can tell that they’ve shopped through the trailer.” Thieves can open and rummage through five or six trailers before they pick what they want. Other times, they might have inside information. “Sometimes they do surveillance on the warehouses. They see what’s being loaded, they know what’s being loaded, and then they follow that truck out until its first stop.” And then they wait… until the driver pulls into a rest stop and leaves his rig.

Strategic Scenarios

So much for “straight” cargo theft. Cornell also knows the scenarios for what he calls “strategic” cargo theft. Some thieves will go so far as to steal the identity of a legit trucking operation, go online to the load boards and make a bid in their victim’s name. A shipper innocently accepts the offer, and goodbye merchandise. “So then the legitimate trucking company will get a call a week later or a couple of days later, saying, ‘Hey, you picked up a load of widgets from us the other day, and we haven’t heard from you since,’ and the company says, ‘We’ve never picked up a load from you, we don’t know who you are, that wasn’t us.’ And then you realize that their identity has been stolen.”



In what Cornell labels “fictitious pickup,” the thieves learn where a scheduled load has to be picked up, show up hours early posing as the legitimate carrier, and off they go. Like something out of a heist movie, the real carriers then come along at the proper time—but far too late.

“Is that happening here?” asks Garry Robertson. “Absolutely it is.” In Quebec “not that long ago,” a thieves’ ring had “all the correct paperwork” with phony invoices but the right logos, letterhead and branding for a genuine carrier, right down to the proper markings for the truck they used. The beauty of that, he says, is that “they not only had all the information, but everything that was done was done properly. Drivers’ licenses were exchanged… photo ID taken.” Fake, fake—all fakes.

“Bad guys can be legitimate on paper.”

Then there’s the “misdirected load.” Scott Cornell says the “bad guys can be legitimate on paper,” forming a front company. Once again, they do all the right things, bid on a load and then call up the customer to say, “Hey, we’re in transit, the driver’s having some difficulty with his tractor, he’s going to pull in and get some repairs. We might be a little bit behind schedule, but no problems, we just wanted to let you know….”
Then our villains actually “bobtail in” to get some repairs done, having committed minor sabotage—a belt or a hose, something minimal—all while another member of the group takes care of the trailer. And the driver, who happens to be in on the job, has his very plausible alibi, a genuine bill for the repair job.

The tactics are getting increasingly sophisticated. And Barry Peabody says planning has to be done along the way to figure out the best practice for securing loads and equipment. “Do you just pull over into a parking lot of a shopping mall with no security around you whatsoever, or do you find areas of high visibility? Do you back your trailer up against a wall so the doors can’t get opened, or do you leave it sitting out…?”

After all, a truck can be stolen in minutes—and there’s money to be made even in selling the tractor-trailer. “You know, there’s some security you can get. You can put a kingpin lock on there to stop anybody else from coupling up to your trailer, but… they can open up the back doors of your trailer, and it’s very possible that they could be in and out there in a very short period of time. Now, do they travel around with forklifts if they’ve got to move pallets? No, they don’t, but if you’ve got a load of iPad Minis valued at $700 a pop, and you’ve got 10 minutes, you could pull an awful lot of boxes out of there and be gone.”

Peabody says most insurers haven’t looked at their product since the ‘70s, and yet the trucking industry has changed enormously since that time. “The quality of the trailer is tighter, stronger. The doors are better, and they seal better. The suspension is more reliable, so you don’t have as many vehicles falling into ditches because the suspension gives out. The refrigeration unit that might be on trailers, these things are all controlled now by computers and monitored through the GPS systems and the cellular systems.”

Peabody’s own firm, SGI, has been as guilty as the rest, he admits, of not keeping up to date to meet the concerns of trucking customers. The company is trying to rectify that with its product, Cargo Secure, which offers new features such as coverage for load contamination. Thieves got a head start, but it sounds like the industry is at last catching up.

Meanwhile, the cops keep pace as well. As we go to press, Detective Sergeant Paul LaSalle says one individual from the raids in May has been charged so far with possession of stolen goods over $5,000, with other charges pending. His force is building its case against those in charge of the theft operation. The police know who the crooks are and are closing in. End of the road, no exit…


Original Article