A Union Pacific freight train navigates the tracks in downtown Los Angeles that has been littered with thousands of shredded boxes, packages stolen from cargo containers that stop in the area to unload Friday, January 14, 2022.
Irfan Khan | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
Instead of shoplifting from stores, some thieves are zeroing in on another target: Trains and delivery trucks full of packages on the way to customers’ doorsteps.
UPS Chief Executive Carol Tome said Friday that one of the company’s 18-wheeler trucks was robbed in Atlanta in the early hours of the morning. She said thieves hijacked the truck after the driver left one of the delivery company’s largest hubs.
“He was stopped at gunpoint. He was zip-tied, thrown into the back of his feeder car and they took the packages,” she said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” The robbery took place in late December, according to an NBC news report.
In downtown Los Angeles, a video from the local CBS station shows looted packages littering the train tracks. Thieves raided cargo containers and left behind cardboard boxes that had been carrying purchases from Amazon and REI, including some with UPS labels and tracking numbers, according to the report. Those abandoned boxes carried merchandise ranging from unused Covid tests and fishing lures to EpiPens, according to tweets from one of the TV station’s reporters.
According to a report from NBCLA, the thefts have been an ongoing issue in recent months.
LOS ANGELES CA JANUARY 14, 2022 – A man walks along a section of the Union Pacific train tracks in downtown Los Angeles that has been littered with thousands of shredded boxes, packages stolen from cargo containers that stop in the area to unload Friday, January 14, 2022. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Irfan Khan | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
