Courier vehicles targeted

Spike in robbery, hijacking incidents

WHILE the spike in online shopping has significantly boosted the e-commerce sector, there are widespread fears criminals are growing accustomed to targeting courier vehicles transporting goods.

This week, a White Nissan X Trail belonging hand-to-hand courier service RAM was robbed of cellphones in Radiokop, Roodepoort.

An industry insider, who did not want to be named, said several delivery vehicles transporting cellphones to retailers whose stock had depleted during the hard lockdown had recently been stolen.

This was despite the Santam Insurance Group, which insures many of the country’s courier vehicles, insisting this week that they had not experienced a spike in the theft of, or hijacking of delivery vehicles.

The financial services company added that they also had not seen an increase in insurance claims for the theft of couriered goods.

But Budget Business Insurance told Business Tech they had noted an direct increase in theft as a result of the increase in online shopping.

The insurer’s Alex Terblanche said in some instances, the vehicles had been recovered but the goods were missing.

“The fact that the majority of these vans and vehicles are being taken by force or in armed robberies and hijackings is of great concern,” he told the online publication.

Finance experts are concerned about the impact these robberies will have on the country’s already ailing economy, as the local e-commerce industry’s estimated R62 million in revenue this year was under threat.

Amid these concerns, trucking magazine Fleetwatch this week hosted a webinar relating to the increase in truck and delivery vehicle theft, particularly during the lockdown.

The publication noted that since the dawn of democracy in 1994, when South Africa’s borders were open to trade, the country had been battling to fight against the scourge of hijackings.

Fleetwatch also listed service delivery protests a threat to the safe delivery of goods.

But a security expert believes that courier vehicle and truck drivers were considered easy targets by criminals as they were often unarmed and untrained.

“They are the easiest target at the moment because the drivers are just drivers,” said the expert, who wished to remain anonymous.

But Gareth Newham, head of the governance, crime and justice division at the Institute for Security Studies said: “Many criminals and their networks are opportunistic and look out for new targets. During the lockdown, more people started using couriers to deliver shopping and products to them so as to avoid going out, and with a reduction in people moving around, courier vehicles would have been an obvious target.”

There is also a belief that the value of the goods being transported and the fact that they can easily be resold on the black market was another factor contributing to the crime trend.

It is believed that, like cash-intransit heists, these robberies were not sporadic but rather well orchestrated.