The Dark Side of Trucking

[AgentSmith]

A comment by @Freight Broker -- "I had someone disappear for five years... and came back to me as if nothing happened. He was honest about it.. spent some time in jail" -- got me thinking of those in trucking I know that spent time in jail, committed crimes, or were just despicable individuals and also some of the shady sh!t I have seen.

• Driver murdered his wife and later committed suicide as the police were investigating and focused on him as the prime suspect
• Driver involved in GST fraud, applying for GST credits from forged truck sale or lease documents
• Same individual as above, previously was part of kidnaping / ransom attempt gone wrong and the person kidnapped was murdered
• Driver committed an indecency to human remains
• Almost a dozen trucks riddled with bullets during a port strike -- perpetrators never apprehended. Some of the trucks were unrelated to the local strike work had line haul driver's sleeping in them
• Driver quit and abandoned a truck / trailer / load at the side of the highway, load was stolen -- a private investigator said the driver allegedly owed a debt to some motorcycle enthusiasts and this was payment. This was not pursued and no charges filed as the cargo policy had a clause for employee collusion that could potentially cause the underwriters to deny the claim
• Load was hijacked as the driver stopped for a staged accident blocking the road. The driver was forced from the truck, had a hood placed on him and was bound with rope, later found in the back of a cargo van unhurt, beside the truck and now empty trailer in an adjacent city. The driver was not involved and was a victim of the crime
• Driver attempted to smuggle approx. $5 million of the devil’s lettuce into the USA, he was apprehended. He claimed innocence and he even had a character reference from his temple priest extolling his virtuous nature. The driver’s wife and brother were arrested within few months of police undercover work as the wife and brother carried on the smuggling operation
• Driver found a way to circumvent the seal on the trailer and was selling tobacco from the grocery load. Every load delivered with the seal intact but was short tobacco. He was eventually caught and arrested through undercover surveillance as it was too coincidental that only the loads he pulled were missing freight
• Driver took truck and trailer home after delivering then disappeared -- found the truck and trailer 250ish miles away at the roadside, local Police noticed it was sitting in the same spot for more than a week and called. I finally spoke to the driver when he was looking for his paycheck, turns out he used the truck and trailer to move to another city then abandoned the units, he thought he was very clever

There is also a side story that connects to the Pickton farm. I'm sure there is more if I think about it a while longer....

Please add your experiences

 

[misto27]

That is.....I don't know...troubling?
Got a couple of stolen loads in my carrer but that is an extensive list.

Had more crappy weird sh*t in 2 years managing buses drivers. But this is something!

 

[Freight Broker]

I guess to be fair we would have to include shippers, receivers, brokers and carriers, and others too. The "dark side" casts its unwelcome shadow over us all. I'm in the habit of dumping any name I get into the "search engine" to see what surfaces..shippers, receivers too. I do this out of curiosity but also because my livelihood, like yours, depends on honest dealings with strangers at a distance... whether you're a carrier or driver or broker... you're depending on strangers who are often hundreds of miles away. So when I do my search, stuff does come up... sometimes its nothing too serious.. but often enough, it's something that might send shivers down my spine.. like a listing on an online sex offender registry..a news story about an arrest or an assault.. etc.. So what can you do?... you're not going to turn down a load because the receiver you're going to is somewhat sketchy personally.. if we did that we likely wouldn't be doing much business.

 

[TRC604]

Last year we had a temporary foreign worker driver take a load from BC to Miami.

He had to do a layover about 2 hours away from the destination so he decided to abandon his truck and loaded trailer and go out for the weekend.

Driver was not answering our calls and we had to fly out another driver from Vancouver to Miami.

Long story short, he went missing, was later found to be in an ICU in a hospital in Pompano Beach, FL hooked up to a ventilator. In total he spent a month in the hospital, had 3 surgeries and we were told it was all caused by choking on a slice of pizza. This was a younger guy too in his early 30's. I did not beleive what the Doctor told me about the pizza slice.

Driver was subsequently fired and never saw him again.

 

[loaders]

Last year we had a temporary foreign worker driver take a load from BC to Miami.

He had to do a layover about 2 hours away from the destination so he decided to abandon his truck and loaded trailer and go out for the weekend.

Driver was not answering our calls and we had to fly out another driver from Vancouver to Miami.

Long story short, he went missing, was later found to be in an ICU in a hospital in Pompano Beach, FL hooked up to a ventilator. In total he spent a month in the hospital, had 3 surgeries and we were told it was all caused by choking on a slice of pizza. This was a younger guy too in his early 30's. I did not beleive what the Doctor told me about the pizza slice.

Driver was subsequently fired and never saw him again.

Who paid his hospital bill? Must have been a doozy!

 

[TRC604]

Who paid his hospital bill? Must have been a doozy!

Definitely not us.

They wouldn't tell us how much the bill was but I can only imagine.