Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/791967
24 | Overdrive | March 2017 I magine arriving at a gate and pre- senting papers to pick up a load. The man in the guard shack looks confused, muttering to himself and double-checking his list of impending arrivals, only to tell you you've already been there. The load is gone. It's a situation that's become more common since the so-called "fictitious pickup" cargo theft mode drew enough attention in supply-chain security circles to warrant specific tracking in theft statistics. It began to "emerge as a trend around 2005," says a paper issued in 2013 by the CargoNet freight security firm. It grew to account for a significant share of all thefts reported to CargoNet in 2011, with many of them occurring in California. By 2012, such incidents, often involving thieves' fraudulent assumption of an existing carrier's identity, accounted for 8 percent of all thefts reported to CargoNet. Between 2014 and 2015, the inci- dence of most typical theft types declined, according to FreightWatch, a provider of trailer tracking, theft alerts and data analysis. Conversely, "it is noteworthy that by all indications, fictitious pickups did indeed rise," the firm's 2015 yearend report notes, accounting for between 5 percent and 6 percent of thefts through- out 2015. Though the full 2016 report is not out, the first and second quarters continued that trend, with fictitious pick- ups at 5 percent in the first quarter and 9 percent in the second, a marked spike. Straight theft — thieves unload a trailer, hitch to a loaded trailer or steal a loaded tractor-trailer — remains the Sleight of truck Con men use tech savvy and daring to position their rigs for bogus pickups in the fastest-growing mode of cargo theft. BY TODD DILLS