Incident:  Rail Pilferage and Recovery  

Over this past weekend, Overhaul enabled the recovery of electronics cargo from a rail pilferage performed in Indiana.  

Late on the evening of Friday, September 20th, the Overhaul GSOC alerted that a shipment of consumer electronics was being pilfered from its container on rail in Indianapolis, IN.  

Coordinating with the Indiana Railroad, Indianapolis Metro PD, and private security, the Overhaul LE Connect team provided officers with the real time location and critical sensor data needed to locate the single container on the nearly mile-long train.  

The swift response interrupted the theft in progress, causing the thieves to flee without taking their pilfered cargo. The thieves had targeted a single container on the top level of a double stacked train, no other containers were tampered with.  

As the theft was performed in the rural outskirts of Indianapolis, the cargo had been tossed out of the container and hidden at ground level for the thieves to return during daylight hours to collect the stolen electronics.  

It should be noted that while pilferage from rail is common, recoveries of cargo stolen from rail are rare. Cargo on rail is notoriously difficult to secure, requiring granular, real-time visibility to be able to identify stolen cargo before it arrives at destination. Even with this granular visibility, the lack of direct control of the cargo while on rail coupled with the remote locations where these thefts often happen make recoveries near impossible.  

Overhaul recommends that shippers of targeted and high demand or high value products over rail employ as many visibility solutions as able. The ability to pinpoint the location and time of theft enables coordination and cooperation of the appropriate Law Enforcement entities and can be the crucial pieces of data that allow Law Enforcement to be successful.  

Over rail, there is far less control of the cargo when compared to over the road, and so contextual intelligence, remote compliance monitoring, real time visibility, and an immediate escalation process with a path to effective law enforcement engagement are critical to recognizing and recovering stolen cargo.