Freightwatch International Releases Cargo Theft Report
Cargo crime in the US last year saw an average of more than two truck or container thefts every day. The latest figures from Freightwatch International report an average of 78 cargo theft incidents a month in 2012 – a rate of almost 2.6 per day.
Of these incidents, 760 (80.8 percent) were full-truckload or container thefts and 41 (4.3 percent) were less-than-truckload losses. Deceptive (fictitious) pickups, on the rise since the start of FreightWatch data, peaked in 2012 at 61 incidents (6.5 percent), while there were 17 thefts from a facility, with only one including any human contact with the thieves.
The report added that the number incidents involving violence remained very low, representing just 2.2 percent of all cargo theft. FreightWatch recorded 940 cargo theft incidents throughout the US in 2012. While only 0.53 percent lower than 2011, the highest number of theft incidents on record, FreightWatch expects that delayed incident data for 2012 will continue to flow in over the coming weeks due to delayed reporting which is consistently seen.
