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OUN 1.
Page 48
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Reported trailer thefts are up 40% on last year, partly because our intelligence is Improving. Len Fuller, technical director of Andover Trailers, explains what else we can do. To sound off about a road transport Issue terns to Patric Cunnane patric.cunnane a ,h] , k or fax your *WS (up to NO words) to Ricky Clarke on 020 8652 8912.
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estimates now put the cost at over .£100m a year.
Trailer registration should help cut this cost and the crime behind it by giving police the reliable database they currently lack. This would help deter thieves and help the police find stolen trailers more easily. The overall effect would be to help control the rising cost of trailer theft.
It is certainly a cost that industry could do without. Last summer police figures showed just over 12,000 trailers reported stolen and unrecovered. That figure certainly understated the true total, Most trailer theft is lumped together with truck theft and when an artic is reported stolen, the paperwork will usually identify the tractor only. If the police are lucky there may be a line about the trailer, perhaps giving its colour and even a fleet number. Not much to go on if, as usual, tractor and trailer are separated after the theft.
And many trailers are stolen on their own from yards and truck parks. For these, the chances of recovery are even lower.
The way the Police National Computer works is that when a vehicle is stolen the crime stays on the system until it is solved; then it drops off. If it hasn't been solved after three years it is deleted. So solved thefts just aren't in the statistics—meaning that the figures don't tell the whole story.
Fortunately. trailer reporting is getting better. In part this explains why the stolen trailer total jumped nearly 40% from last year—but this isn't the whole answer. The police are increasingly finding evidence of organised crime as gangs cash-in on easy, low-risk money.
For most types of vehicle theft the proportion of the national fleet reported stolen at any one time is around 0.5%. In the UK, trailer theft runs at more than 6% of the UK trailer fleet-12 times higher than average.
On the European mainland it seems that trailer theft runs at around 0.5% of their national fleets too. Alone in Europe, the UK fails to register trailers. This and the abnormally high percentage of UK trailers stolen may well be connected. The fact that the UK does not have a consistent system for trailer chassis numbering may also play a part.
The police say that in most cases, and contrary to popular opinion, the trailer, not its load, is the target in any theft. The load, if there is one, is a bonus.
Once stolen the trailer can be quickly and comprehensively re identified with paperwork from the Vehicle Inspectorate. The result is a virtually cast-iron new identity. Armed with this criminals can easily reset a trailer, sometimes even to the same company from which it was stolen, Occasionally that company will not even have noticed the trailer was missing. One particular police operation found over 100 stolen trailers, of which fewer than 20 had been reported stolen.
Fridge boxes and curtainsiders are the most popular choice. These find a ready market right across Europe, and in particular in the eastern European states.
Trailer registration won't stop trailer theft but it will close a vital gap in the identification trail, giving the police the same powerful weapons they have to fight car crime which, in percentage terms of the overall fleet, is 12 times lower—just as it seems to be on the European mainland where trailers are registered.
Predictably, insurance companies are becoming increasingly worried about trailer theft, particularly as they compare their risks and costs across Europe. Trailer registration alone won't solve this problem, but it would plug a big hole in the police armoury and would help keep rising costs under better control.