Stolen trucks, is it more common than I think?

A friend of mine rents and leases trailers. He gets a 4” round tail light that has the same diode pattern as a Petersen light only it has a tracker inside it.

 

Company I work for has trackers on the trailers that are powered by the lights

years ago I was bobtailing in my freightliner and got hit hard by a KW ,
Guy had a stolen tractor, with a stolen license plate , suspended CDL .


cops didn’t run his DL they didn’t find out everything was stolen
I found out when I called the number on the fake insurance card he gave the cops.
And then I had my uncle who was a cop run the VIN to see which insurance company had the policy on the VIN

turns out the tractor was stolen a couple of years ago in NJ
I talked to the cops in NJ and they said they had had lots of trucks stolen from their areas and this was the only one that had ever surfaced .

if you got no truck payment and no insurance payment , I guess you can make some easy Money in trucking .

 

I think NJs laws against parking your tractor in residential areas is a blessing for thieves. Have been a lot stolen lately and found stripped a week later. The high cost of some parts like the SCR system opens up a big market for used parts.

 

I worked for a Kenworth dealer that owned 19 dealerships. One day a guy walked
into one of the smaller dealerships during the lunch break and introduced himself
as a salesman for one of the other dealerships. He said he was here to pick up
that new Kenworth in the parking lot. The parts guy went and found the keys and
gave it to the salesman. They never did find the truck. I'm fairly sure someone was
looking for a job the following day.

 

In my Rollins leasing days somebody walked into the omaha branch and hot wired a tandem day cab , drove it across town to the tractor supply DC and picked up a Rollins trailer loaded with go carts and drove right out the gate not looking out of place at all because Rollins did all of tscs work back then .
Trailer was found empty at a truckstop in Missouri valley Iowa, tractor sitting on a street in council bluffs iowa .
The go carts were never found as far as I know .
Years ago Crete had a load of beer go missing in Lincoln....trailer was found empty in omaha , don't know where the beer went .

 

I guess they were smart enough to remove the ELD tracking?

 

Had a few stolen and found with 4 junk tires missing 3 of 4 batteries, product pump [in the tanker days] and so forth.

We had a call one winter evening from Jersey City PD saying they found our stolen truck.

Boss said 'good we will come right over' and they said "no, tomorrow morning at 8, we don't go there after dark."

Most show up, partially stripped within 3 days, otherwise they are in a container.

Before it's economic implosion, a lot of trucks and especially old tanks were sold to a broker sending them to Venezuela. Lately they go to Africa.

How many stolen trucks are going in the same containers as the ones the broker 'bought'...

 

We sold the last two owned trucks and the GPS/ELD's were not removed. they last reported from the seaport and when I zoom in, one is in the water [on a ship?] and the other is on the adjoining pier. Lost contact after it sailed....last contact ow over 100 days ago.

 

You can actually do this at many trucking companies now with a shop, give them a truck number in the ready line they hand them keys right over.

 

Many years back I heard a dealer had the drive tires stolen off several new trucks parked on the lot. Don't know if they ever found the group who did it.