OAK CREEK, Wis. (AP) — It’s a caper of grand proportion in a state that loves its cheddar.
Police in southeastern Wisconsin say 20,000 pounds of cheese has vanished. The cheese, produced by U.S. Foods, was in a semitrailer parked at a business in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek when it went missing Thursday.
Police say the semi driver was transporting the load from Green Bay to the New York City area and unhitched the trailer to run an errand. When he returned, the trailer and $46,000 worth of cheese was gone.
It’s not the first such heist of the legacy commodity in a state where sports fans like to wear foam wedges on their heads. A semitrailer carrying $70,000 worth of cheese was stolen from Germantown, another Milwaukee suburb, in January.
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I am betting this is some sort of an inside job. Who unhitches their truck cab for a while and leaves a refrigerated truck loaded with cheese in summer weather conditions? And then who would have a truck cab come by and just “hook up” and drive off? Why, in this day and age, is there no GPS monitoring device on a shipment worth so many thousands of dollars? Sure, there are truck cabs with GPS, and truck cargo vans with GPS, just in case these things happen, it’s not that expensive to equip both cab and cargo with GPS, which works 24/7/365 while there is power available to it.
And what would one thief do with 20,000 pounds of cheese in Wisconsin if one didn’t have a ready market to sell it ?
I think we haven’t heard the last chapter in these cheesy story… an insider job.
trying to picture how someone would fence 20,000 lbs of cheese…
do they walk down the street in a long overcoat and whisper out of the corner of their mouth ‘psst… hey buddy… wanna good deal on some cheddar?’
Somebody who’s starving to death and wants to make a food run. Truckers do it all the time. ALL THE TIME. I’ll bet he was gone less than an hour. Moreover, the reefer is going to run until it’s either turned off or runs out of fuel. Summer weather has nothing to do with anything.
Many, many, many people. I saw a tractor once with a cutout in its fifth wheel so that it could be used to steal trailers equipped with king-pin locks. I called the cops. They said, “Yeah, we know who he is and we’ve been waiting (for him to steal a trailer).”
Many trailers are equipped with LoJack devices. Whether this one was or not wasn’t mentioned. But like any electronic device it can be disabled.
Steal 20,000 pounds of macaroni? LOL
BTW: A $36K load is actually very, very small peanuts; 20,000 lbs. isn’t even half a load. An average electronics load — which is infinitely easier to get rid of — can be worth upwards of $1M or more.
The mafia still exists. And truck hijacking/trailer theft has been and still is a major part of their business.
Must be Friday.