Caveat Emptor On Craigslist

Around Flint and Detroit there are dozens of abandoned lots that are used for vehicle storage. At most those lots have a single guard making barely minimum wage. Wouldn't be much to just pay attention to when said guard takes their nap and then call a few friends and drive several off the lot.
most are "secure" lots sure, but all that means is a fence or some jersey barriers placed around it. No cameras, and not even any lights for a lot of them.

 

The same old story... Greed overrides the "Sounds too good to be true" maxim.

Usually inside jobs, someone gets a job with the unloader/shuttle crew, sees how it works, comes back to take advantage of weak spots in security.

Common method is to breach fence with one vehicle and drive others out behind it. Railheads with rail spurs inside the perimeter fence don't have much trouble with theft, those where the unloading happens outside the perimeter have more issues, as the gates spend hours open during unloading, and are weak points in perimeter security. The rest of the fence will have a secondary barrier: K-rail, jersey barriers, or cables.

Key management could happen, GM does it at their program car lots. But we live in the age of save every penny.
Some facilities have even gone automated where there's often no one on site after hours unless a carrier happens to be in there loading. But even the manned sites are easy pickings if one was so inclined.

 

C'mon now! How hard can it be to label keys and stick them in a safe? And no tracking from factory? They DESERVE to be ripped off.

 

As far as we can see, locksets and keys aren't labeled by vin. It's far cheaper to just have a bin of bags and throw whatever you grab in the next vehicle (fleet vehicles keyed alike have to handled differently, of course.) Changing that would require a rework of the entire lockset supply chain to make sure they were in proper vin order, a switch from bulk to JIT.

Then, handling the gathering of keys from unloaded vehicles AND keeping them in some semblance of order would be a #####. And require at least 2 people (one to disperse keys to drivers and at least one to gather/store) and more than that at the larger yards.

And i promise nobody wants to pay for that... Most don't even pay for off-rail inspections anymore.

 

Taking notes, I like the new Bronco...............