What a start to our Monday morning as we had 4 different companies call us this morning reporting that they had trailers and some truck and trailers stolen this morning. Has anyone else had issues with theft over this past weekend?
Possibly a direct result of the ongoing race to the bottom that most large 3PLS try to create when they create programs like key carriers, core carriers, managed carriers etc to attempt to artificially create price competition to gain access to lower cost trucks. Unfortunately, with a model like that, its only a matter of time before the chickens come home to roost - lower costs always result in lowered levels of compliance and shortcuts being taken. While cargo theft certainly isn't the direct responsibility of the load broker trying to find the cheapest rate, its definitely the cold hard hand of reality providing its own reality check for a business model that's going be be questionable over the long term.
The other interesting observation that I would be making if I were in your shoes was considering the possibility that it was one of your employees that was involved in the theft. For four of your loads to go missing over the same weekend, across multiple carriers, it would appear that tracing expectations of providing tractor and trailer number is a great way to enable theft and certainly stands directly in contradiction to any risk management best practices. Why any carrier in their right mind would want to provide that information to a 3rd part with no vested interest in protecting the information to minimize theft is beyond me.