Cargo theft: Billion-dollar racket that’s hitting your back pocket
The police call it Cargo Theft Season. That time of year leading up to Christmas when thieves target the tractor-trailer loads of valuable goods making their way to market on Ontario’s highways. And while it peaks in December, it is a constant problem and is costing consumers billions of dollars every year.
“It’s bad,” Garry Robertson of the Insurance Bureau of Canada told CTV’s W5. “To give you an example, last year we had roughly 200 theft reports given to us. This year so far, we’re up over 400. And that’s primarily just in southern Ontario.”
And these figures are reported thefts only, Robertson said. It’s an open secret that some transportation companies will not report a trailer being stolen, preferring instead to absorb losses in order to avoid damage to their reputations and increases to insurance rates. So the true scale of the losses is not known.
Just how brazen the thieves are is seen in surveillance video obtained by W5.
They can be seen checking out a storage yard. Within minutes they find a loaded truck and trailer, get in the cab, hotwire it and drive off. The last they are seen in the video is as they smash through the security gate.
A decade ago, it was estimated losses to this type of theft cost $1billion a year across Canada. But it has shot up astronomically, the head of the province’s trucking agency said.
“It’s sort of hard to put a real number on it now. Our own numbers indicate it’s probably closer to $5 billion a year,” said David Bradley, president of the Ontario Trucking Association. “And the real victim is the consumer, who, at the end of the day, is paying a higher price because of all of this.”
The thieves are not picky. They will take just about anything. Witness a recent raid at a warehouse in Mississauga, near Pearson airport, by York Regional Police working with a private detective from the insurance industry.
There was an undeniable sense of anticipation among the officers waiting for the large warehouse doors to slide up. Hidden behind the doors was the take from a large cargo robbery that had occurred just five days earlier.
That heist took place on a fall weekend in a spacious dirt parking area just north of Vaughan. Transportation companies and truck drivers frequently use lots just like it, renting space for a short time while waiting to deliver goods to their final destination. This parking area is set back from the main road, there is no visible security, and on any given evening there is probably millions of dollars of consumer goods sitting inside the dozens of trailers parked on the lot.
The trailer that was stolen contained a load that originated in the United States and was awaiting delivery to Toronto-area wholesalers. Police don’t know why the thieves chose it. But they probably pulled off the heist within minutes.
Within two days of the robbery, York Regional Police got word of somebody trying to find buyers for a large load of stolen goods. The information led to a stakeout, the arrest of two suspects and a visit to the warehouse in Mississauga.
As an officer slowly opened the warehouse doors the stolen goods that lay inside were revealed. But this was no glittering pile of treasure. Instead, it was 14,835 kilograms of candy, mostly Lifesavers. It may seem a mundane, everyday product, but the stolen load had a stated insurance retail value of $200,000.
“This is what I would consider a high-value load in both dollar-wise and its value out on the black market because it’s easily sold,” said York Regional Police Det.-Sgt. Paul LaSalle, who led the raid.
Had they not made their quick breakthrough, police say the candy likely would have been parcelled out to flea markets and corner stores before the theft was reported.
Instead, as with most stolen food products that are recovered, because the theft had created what the industry calls “a broken chain of care,” the load was not returned to the marketplace. It ended up in a landfill as a total loss.
According to police this kind of crime happens regularly. In the Toronto area recently they’ve investigated thefts of laundry detergent, dishwashing soap, organic potato chips, ink jet cartridges, and slabs of granite. Considering that 90 per cent of all consumer goods spend at least some time on the back of a truck, it’s a logical conclusion that virtually all manner of goods are being stolen.
“We are now in a global marketplace. There seems to be a market for just about anything somewhere in the world,” Bradley said. “So we get everything from high-valued electronic goods to grocery products, to toilet paper being stolen on a daily basis.”
Bradley said the thieves often belong to loosely organized gangs that choose cargo theft because “it’s relatively low risk and there’s a high reward.”
W5 decided to test just how easy it might be to get into a cargo yard. The show’s producers enlisted the help of Mike Grabovica, general manager of Birdseye, a company that sells security systems to the transportation industry.
The team drove around Pearson airport and entered three truck yards. The team parked its car in plain view, walked around, checked the doors of trucks to see whether they were locked and knocked on the sides of trailers to check whether they were loaded (most were). At one point, they waved at security cameras that supposedly had the area under surveillance. No one was challenged.
Standing in the middle of a yard full of trucks, Grabovica said, “We are acting suspiciously. We’re knocking on trucks, we’re trying to open doors. I mean, if this isn’t acting suspicious, I don’t know what is.”
It’s obvious it would not have taken long to hook up a trailer and drive off with a load of cargo.
There is another reason thieves focus on tractor-trailer cargos: there is a much lower risk of serious jail time. Cargo robberies are considered property theft and usually do not involve the threat of violence. This means a thief stealing an unguarded trailer faces less chance of a lengthy jail sentence. By comparison, robbing a bank, and the threat of violence that often comes with it, is higher risk for thieves. A conviction can mean lengthy jail time.
“The people involved get suspended sentences, or they get off because they haven’t been caught before and that sort of thing,” said Bradley. “I think most people would feel that the penalties aren’t sufficient to act as a deterrent.”
The transportation industry is lobbying for tougher penalties. And while it does, the insurance industry is working to plug a hole in the investigation process.
Traditionally, when police recover stolen goods, they cannot begin to investigate until they know from whom and from where the goods were stolen. That often would involve the laborious business of calling police in other jurisdictions across the country.
The insurance industry hopes the solution will be provided by the National Cargo Theft Reporting Program, a new initiative.
When fully functional, it is designed to record all cargo thefts and immediately send alerts to law enforcement agencies throughout North America.
“We are seeing the recovery numbers change drastically because we are getting hits on the database,” said Garry Robertson of the Insurance Bureau of Canada. “Police agencies are finding stolen property and we are able to get it back to the trucking company or whoever now is the owner.”
Both the transportation and insurance industries are trying to raise the public profile of cargo theft, particularly when you consider the billions in losses each year.
But stealing cargo is seen as a victimless crime in some circles, an impression the insurance industry is trying to change.
“It is not a victimless crime and it is not just an insurance problem,” said Robertson. “It is costing everybody.”
And it is not going away. Right now, York and Peel Regional Police are the only two forces in the country with units that specialize in cargo theft. And their caseloads increase by the day.
Standing beside a stolen trailer full of recovered laundry dryers, Det.Sgt. LaSalle of York Regional Police laughed when asked if there was any chance he’d go out of business any time soon. “No,” he answered. “It’s just too profitable for the thieves.” Tom Kennedy is a reporter at CTV’s W5. Hot Wheels will air on W5 on Saturday at 7 p.m.
Experts estimate cargo theft across Canada could cost as much as $5 billion per year