Consider this when talking about cargo value. A Can of soup costs about $2 in the states. 12 cans in a case, 5 cases per layer on a pallet with 5 to 8 layers on each pallet. 28 pallets in a trailer. Compared to Tires are typically not palletizing, rather loaded by hand. The typical trailer or cargo container is about 8 foot wide, 9 foot tall, and 53 foot long. How many tires can you fit in that space?
Diesel tanker trucks are usually 7500 gallons and diesel is about 2.50 USD whole sale so if a bent garage gave you half the cost you’d be looking at in the region of ten thousand for the load generally you wouldn’t try to sell the tanker itself because that requires special skill and facilities mostly in a hijack it’s get dumped not least because in a Stand and deliver the tanker owner maybe in on it, he doesn’t care about the fuel but doesn’t want to loose his truck that said I think Homer is right that you are over thinking it, just stick to generality and don’t worry too much about how much harder it’s become in the last five to ten years an obvious answer to the tracker issue is that it’s a small firm running on old trucks and thus doesn’t have one
Tracking is often an insurance requirement. @Xoic has the simplest work around. The other possibility is the trucking company has a set time frame for pinging the equipment, a standard practice. That can be used as a ticking clock for the theft, as they have to get the cargo off and truck moved within a set window, even with someone on the inside delaying the ping interval.
Maybe they’re a sketchy outfit who don’t bother with insurance or maybe they’re criminals themselves trucking contraband who don’t want to be tracked the other option is just to hand wave it, most people won’t t know jack about he trackers so if he says there’s not one on the trailer the reader will take it as gospel
All of this information has been amazing, guys. Now all that matters is me figuring out what's the easiest cargo with the highest payout.
I’d go with cigarettes, they are light, compact and easy to sell to dodgy shop owners etc for a lot more than you’d get from a fence… also only the outer paper wraps have serial numbers,once broken down to individual packs they are practically untraceable
Let's say that they have a fence who is willing to buy the entire contents of the truck. Now a 40 foot container can carry around 900 cases, or about 47,500 cartons. One carton has, let's say, a market value of $100. For 47500 cartons, we're looking at a market value of about $5,225,000. So, if the fence takes it at 10% then the score would be around £522,500, right? That's a solid take.
Grab your calculator Typical pallets are 40x48 inches. Cartons will be stacked on end in a case box. A case would contain about 40 to 50 cartons, based on standard box sizes. Once you know the case size you can figure out how many can fit in a layer on a pallet. Considering the weight of the cartons you can fit 8 to 10 layers on a pallet. The height of the trailer is really the limiting factor on how high you can stack the pallets.
Okay. We got a forty-foot container that can hold about 20 pallets. Let's say it's a carton of Marlboro. So dimensions wise, no different to any other. So let's say, 20 pallets in a 40-footer, each one contains 60 cartons. Market price of a carton let's say $100? Total market value of that would be around $1,200,000. So a fence buys all the pallets for around $120,000. Am I anywhere in the ballpark with this?
It'd be wholesale value not retail so less than that ,if the market price was 100 whole sale would be about 80 meaning you'd get about 8 from a fence. The other thing though is there's a limited number of fences who can handle something so big most fences are more about giving a junkie ten dollars for a stolen phone...more likely you'd line up a buyer before you did the job like a bent owner of a 7/11 or a bar or whatever the other option would be to split the job between more than one fence but that increases your risk both because a fence who gets taken dirty will flip and also because you have them in your possession longer while you're parting them out
this asa a rip off of premises rather than a truck but of interest a comparable anyway https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article286072271.html few others that maybe of interest https://www.wtaj.com/news/local-news/box-truck-full-of-cigarettes-stolen-in-okla-found-on-i-80-in-pennsylvania/ https://taungdailynews.com/2023/09/16/a-truck-delivering-consignment-of-cigarettes-worth-r4m-hijacked-two-armed-suspects-arrested-near-kolong/ https://www.pindula.co.zw/2023/11/26/fake-detectives-hijack-truck-transporting-remington-gold-cigarettes/
Damn. I've gone from a bunch of guys robbing a truck of tires. To them hauling twenty pallets to individual fences. The first chapter is the robbery the next one is them discussing payout. So the semantics of how they're paid only has to be said in passing somehow. Most likely, I'll have them hauling the full amount to the fence, who'll then handle selling to smaller vendors. The fence is a high-up guy with connections, so having him do most of the work outside of chapters makes sense. I don't wanna bog anybody down with specifics. As long as the robbery seems authentic, and the money kinda sits in the ballpark of what a take would be, I'm happy.
