Fun fact: The proprietors of both Suez and Panama canals know exactly how much fuel each type of ship uses per nautical mile it travels. The cost of using their canal is slightly under the fuel cost of not using their canal. /Retired merchant mariner.
Idk, sounds more like something McNally would do, and just omit the whole "found this" detail. Gets in, does his thing in under two seconds, yeets the lock to Can Toss Guy in a morph suit, opens the door, and then the video cuts. Of course, to his typical upbeat intense music.
I've seen enough train surfing videos and Lockpicking Lawyer videos to know that both the cargo rail industry and padlock manufacturing industry took the same approach to safety: "Well yeah, but who will really bother?"
Most locks are just there to keep honest people honest. A lock that can keep out someone with a reasonable level of lock-picking skill (or just a really big pair of bolt cutters) is going to be expensive, and until the losses from theft start to approach the cost of outfitting all the containers with those locks nothing's going to happen. I'm not sure that this is an unreasonable view for train companies etc. to take.
@@Michael75579 As a Home Depot employee, _exactly this._ The locks and cages are there to _inconvenience_ thieves (and employees and legitimate customers alike), a determined thief _will_ get through (for fscks sake, _we sell bolt cutters that AREN'T locked up,_ what does corporate expect is going to happen???).
@Michael75579 ok but there is a difference between a half decent made lock and a MasterLock. The most popular lock brand in the states is so bad at being a lock that you can pretty much open it with a rock, leaving the owner none the wiser that someone broke into their precious stuff. You can find plenty of locks for cheaper that do a better job is the problem
@@Depl0rable10 "If their stuff was precious they wouldn't be using MasterLock" is perhaps not the best slogan for MasterLock to run with in their advertising, but is a totally valid consumer mindset nonetheless (actually probably the correct consumer mindset).
@@Depl0rable10Even if you do invest in better locks, then the next weakest link is the latch/hasp on the door, which is stamped steel. A company I work for has shipping containers for storage of building materials, and have had break-ins where a thief just twists the lock with a long bar until it snaps the latch on the door.
I had a teacher that was a former Chicago Police officer. He said gangs loved to break into rail cars. Years ago they got lucky and found a car full of guns and ammo. Since then, a significant portion of all crime in Chicago used one of those stolen guns. The rail cars are basically unguarded because the insurance is cheaper than hiring guards for the rail yards
@@DwightStJohn-w1l It does require them to be caught. And 10 years later, you can easily stick them with the illegal gun charge, but the break in at the rail yard would be impossible to prove.
6:03 Sam says “if you’re wondering whether their insurance companies like this reasoning” and at that moment my RUclips cuts to an ad that begins with “most insurance companies…”
One time, I accidentally drove my car into the port of Long Beach with hundreds of semi trucks unloading cargo like this Bluetooth dog speaker. I have never felt so small before or since 😳
@@AmVeryAwesomethere’s no security or precheck. Cost cutting and less efficient logistically; remember how cheap and greedy corporate from the video? What I’m wondering is how they bypassed all the truck traffic to get in.
I don't get why the insurance companies wouldn't update their policy to something like "your insurance is going to cost X more unless your locks meet Y standard of security", I feel like it would be a stupidly easy way for them to increase their profitability
@@emurphy42Who wants to insure trains that are very likely to get robbed? You get more customers but they’re a bigger liability. It’s like selling life insurance only to overweight 70 year olds who smoke a pack a day.
@@memesthatmakeyouwannadie3133 Presumably the train companies still make them a net profit because the loses to theft are probably fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, but that requires one of two things: 1. The train company to honestly self-report about their security standards 2. The insurance company to go out and inspect the train company's security standards Both of those cost time and money and everyone involved hates spending either of those things, plus it makes the train companies want to just find someone cheaper with lower standards and it makes insurance companies want to get cheaper with lower standards
@@memesthatmakeyouwannadie3133 I have nothing but blind assumption to back up this idea, but I assume that even with a largeish amount of robbery, it still falls into a similar category as shoplifting at supermarkets- its not ideal, but it can simply be factored into the cost of doing business / shrink at least to an extent
Nike shoes used to "fall off the train" in Kansas City when I was a kid. Openly sold at some major intersections, and cops would get Danner boots from the same sellers. Those boots are so good, the cops are still wearing them.
I wish Danner's would fall off a train near me. $300 to get a new pair hurts the cheap part of the brain. They're so good, though, helped save my feet when I switched from issued.
now a days shoes are less effective as in one container they often only have the left shoe. you would need to find the other container having that contains the right shoe. at least that is what they do for the sea bound leg of the journey.
Union Pacific does have it's own police force. They downsized massively during Covid, and are now back at slowly hiring more law enforcement officers. At one point I heard there was about 20 law enforcement officers for the whole of the south west region. They are notoriously spread thin still and they barely can respond to all the calls on the railroad tracks.
You call out the Alameda Corridor but then all the shots of trains impacted in LA are from a different Los Angeles rail segment. More specifically Union Pacific's Alhambra subdivision
There was this vagabond RUclipsr who hitched a ride on a train and almost got into trouble due to water issues but mainly it was amazing how long the trains were, their delays, and how easy it was to access. And this was 2022 and he was just hitching a ride….
My favorite part was when he said "...and that's why I sent our outside correspondent Amy and her band of delinquents and hooligans to the LA alameda corridor to see how easy it really is to pull off a modern day train heist" SO ICONIC
When we move actual dynamite on the railroad, the 20ft containers are oriented so the doors face eachother. We could do the same thing with valuable goods, but that would take extra time so it's not allowed. 40ft containers with high value goods could go in 40ft well cars, not 53ft domestic ones, but again, cost.
@@Jehty_ A lot longer, and more visible/audible that it may be worth. And how big an access do you cut? Just big enough for your arm to reach in and maybe grab a couple of things? big enough for you to squeeze in? What if the items worth stealing are bigger than your access hole?
That is very common at construction sites here in Sweden (and id assume elsewhere too) where lots of expensive tools are stored in containers with beefy locks, but still just regular walls. Cut a small hole, look insideand if they find something good they cut a bigger hole and just walks in. @@Jehty_
The question I have is why don't the insurance companies tell the rail companies "unless you use better locks, we will increase your insurance premiums" or something? If the railroads use better locks, more security and otherwise make stuff harder to get into and steal, there will be less damage and theft and therefore less insurance claims (which is good for the insurance companies presumably) so offering reduced premiums in return for better security seems like it would be a win for the insurance companies.
Because if insurance company A does this, insurance company B immediately goes "our fares are still low!!1!" and steals the clients away before you can blink. Sure, *they* will still have the theft problem, but also more clients so they wouldn't care.
The best part of it is, you can force a train to stop without even damaging anything! If you just camp out near a defect detector you can slap the plate of a dragging-equipment detector to make it think there's a loose airhose near the end, or you can wave a cigarette in front of the IR sensor for the hot box detector, and it'll throw a defect and the crew has to stop and check it out. You can also just buy or make a brake stick which can wreak all sorts of havoc, considering how easy it is to make one out of a broomstick and some sheet metal and the fact it can uncouple cars, open brake hoses, close an anglecock to make the FRED throw an air pressure error, or stick the parking brakes on the cars to trip the aforementioned defect detector with a sliding wheel/hot wheel/hot brake defect.
In Canada, the railroad companies are allowed to have their own police service to patrol the rails and yards. I wonder what the effect of this is on container security because a major container port in Vancouver is inside the Downtown Eastside, but we never hear of any issues with railroad theft.
US railroads also have their own police departments. I have to agree with the LAPD on this one, Union Pacific has their own cops, they need to police their own property.
UP does too. UP used to provide railroad police for this corridor. There are only a few covering for the whole area thanks to staffing cuts. UP made $6 billion in profit last year.
aren't like stolen cars in shipping containers and police literally do nothing? not hard to assume that they'd be quite useless against theft of shipped contents.
Funny story: My uncle moved a lot of his stuff to Venezuela by shipping container when his house was finally finished, but when it got there apparently there was a snafu between the port and the shipping company because the people driving the container in from the port did not actually have the key. So we took out a bonesaw and cut that lock for something like 90 minutes. It was pretty thick. That's *still* more safety than one of the US' top rail freight companies carrying vital goods. On a personal shipment in a third world nothing country. Impressive, folks!
@@Sephiroth144 Of course. Practically any lock can be picked open. Thus the reference to the Lock Picking Lawyer channel. With his tools, skills, and experience, he can open nearly any lock out there.
@@macmedic892 Oh, I know about LPL; and he gets thru some hefty locks. Which is something of my point- a crappy lock or a really solid lock is likely to fall to someone with his level of experience, though it might take a little more time.
Lots of people cracking jokes about LPL over the locks on the containers, but look at them. He said the _upgraded_ locks are 1/8" thick... "better" should at least mean "toddler-proof" or why even bother with a lock at all?
I worked on the corporate side of intermodal for four years and am very familiar with the supply chain here. Customers could designate a load to be “high value” so it’d be loaded on the bottom which makes it virtually impossible to open when loaded into a well car. Hefty locks aren’t really necessary for top loads because they are usually deemed lower value and unloading a trailer 15+ feet in the air isn’t very practical but these criminals are desperate. Trailers (containers with wheels/chassis attached) are loaded onto flat cars and are more subject to attack and likely what the criminals target. In Europe, intermodal trains are not allowed to double stack partly to avoid crime and partly due to smaller tunnels.
Memphis is really bad for train robberies too. When I went about 3 years ago a BNSF cop told us that they had just busted a bunch of people that had 170 TVs in one of the houses. What would happen is Union Pacific interchanges intermodal trains there with CSX and CSX would leave them sitting for three days before taking them. And these trains sat in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Memphis which gave free rein to anyone looking to rob them. It’s still a problem today, I saw an article just the other day that someone was busted for stealing 14 grand worth of TVs off a train.
That's what the billions in stock buybacks are for 🤡 UP's business is built around providing shareholder returns, not running a railroad. They do $6 billion / year in profit and pay most of that to shareholders in dividend and stock buybacks.
Apparently, the issue is that it would cost more to add the needed security to the area than it would for the insurance payout. The railroads have the shippers over a barrel and they all know it. Economics at its finest.
Wait up. That rail corridor is 20 miles long and has trains that could be up to 3 miles long each..? That means one train along could occupy 15% of the entire track at any time. Crazy..
What kills me is that railroad corporations want no government regulation or interference with their operations, but when they have a problem, they claim that it is the government's responsibility to fix that problem.
While the insurance companies may not want to pay for better locks, I'm sure they're quite willing to charge higher premiums to insure this high risk scenario. At some point it would be cheaper for Union Pacific to pay for better locks instead of paying higher premiums. It would also be worthwhile to understand how two train companies dominate freight traffic.
The train companies have nothing to do with the locks on container doors. That's the shipper's responsibility. The shipper knows that the chance of any particular container being breached is small, so spending a lot of money on better locks for every container isn't cost effective. And every lock can be defeated by someone with the time to use a battery powered cutter. The solution is to make criminals FEAR being caught. Back during the Depression, railroads hired men to protect their trains. These guys had a simple rule -- honest men could ride without being harmed, but the dishonest were given enough pain that they would stay away from trains for the rest of their lives.
I'm not saying it won't work, but circumventing a person's due process by private security over property crime tends not to sit well with both voters and politicians nowadays, not to mention it would be extraordinarily difficult to prevent corruption from affecting the work. One bad move that the press gets a whiff of and it's all over again.
@@SoloPilot6 source: listen to anyone talking about corrupt politicians or law enforcement officers. they usually invoke the constitution and the value of due process to make their argument. regardless, really take a step back and look at you: you're asking for extrajudicial punishment by bands of private enforcers. I hope you don't call yourself an american patriot
Alemeda Corridor-East is more of a problem than the original Alemeda Corridor. Most of the pictures of boxes littering the rails come from the western section of that project.
The western section of the eastern corridor... and what are the best cross streets to look at? Asking for a friend... who's definitively not texting from Alondra and Santa Fe
Binghamton New York is really bad when it comes to that too. It’s already a pretty bad and deprived city with lots of poor and desperate people. Coupled with a a rail yard right in the middle of it, and trains that often stop just outside that rail yard. I’ll see entire groups of people standing out there and soon as the train stops, they all hop on and start cutting open shipping containers
My favorite episode of Breaking Bad was the train heist episode. It's also an episode I thought was pure bull -- I liked it because it was an intense episode with one of the greatest WTF moments in the entire series. Turns out, after befriending a train engineer (dude that literally designs trains -- not the guy riding along), this episode of Breaking Bad wasn't just possible but "something exactly like that has almost certainly happened in the past." The hardest part it turns out wasn't the heist itself because, apparently, Walt's plan was actually "really good," but actually knowing exactly which train wagon to rob and being lucky enough to have terrain that would be roughly ideal for stealing that liquid. However, according to him, if you had a lot of money, knew who to bribe, and the part of the train you robbed was around a bend -- it would be absolutely possible to do what Walt and Jesse did.
When I was a little kid, we had two houses and an alley between us and the tracks...and not just one set, but a switching yard or something like it. From that neighborhood, you can walk right up to the trains with not even a ditch to keep people away. Another kid stole some flares from a caboose. I didn't have the nerve to go into it myself. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that thieves get into trains there once in a while. But this is Illinois, not California.
Mostly, rail companies pay for all those lines, contrary to automobile infrastructure. Sure they’re subsidized, but they control the space and traffic rules. This goes back to the barons of yore, wanting to cash in on monopoly control of logistics. If access was open, with rules of access and navigation established, then the trains wouldn’t be so dang long. Just the traffic jams 😂
Next we need "how to rob a cargo ship" and "how to rob a cargo plane" and the trio will be complete. My self taught supply chain knowledge will make me RICH!
These are really good tips, there is also a good spot near here. It's not yet known what is transported there, but you've already given us some clues to help identify this.
The problem is that despite it appearing to be a big problem, for a train company, this is 0.1% of their products. So the insurance cost is negligible compared to their profits. Remember, the theft rates currently are half what they were 40 years ago, so they probably have to rise a lot more before it becomes a problem.
I live near LA and train robberies were a big story about a year or more ago. HAI got the big picture correct about why lots of train robberies happen here, but got a lot of the details wrong. The Alameda corridor isn't a problem to my knowledge. The trains maintain a decent speed throughout it, the entire thing is grade separated, and as they pointed out, a little over half the route is in a giant trench -- with vertical concrete walls. Nobody is robbing a train in the trench (how are you going to get your loot out?). The intermodal yards might experience some theft, but I'm not aware of that area being a problem. The railroads have their own police and I have to think they do a good job with security at their own yards. The problem area shown on the news reports was the stretch of track going through Alhambra, San Gabriel, and just north of Cal State LA. Which leave from a third yard not shown in the video (closer to Union Station). The photos shown in this video of the trash from opened boxes was from that exact stretch of track in Alhambra. There's another track that goes down the middle of the 10 freeway for a few miles, but that's in the middle of the freeway. The two tracks leaving the yards shown in the video I think have the trains running at faster speeds. There might be more problem areas out near San Bernardino, where more yards are, but I just don't know. And at 1:56, I think that might be the port of Oakland. Definitely not LA.
Also! I really wish the railroads could take more of the cargo. We'd have a decrease in pollution (always good), and less traffic on some of our freeways. It depends on the time of day, but I often run into a line of trucks on the 710 and 91 freeways. And trucks cause way more wear on a road than a car.
@@comicus01 more cargo? the trains are already way beyond what should be feasible in terms of length and weight. Sure you can throw in more locos etc. but the mass will cooperate less and less and you only have two people for it. The solution would be new trackage with higher speed limits, more track, electrification, but guess what? Private operators won't do it because costs.
@@monder1060 The ports do not operate 24/7. I don't know if the railroads are pulling cargo out of the port 24/7, but I highly doubt it. They could increase capacity simply by adding more trains throughout the week. It's also possible they could add more trains with signal improvements so they could run more frequently. Half of the Alameda corridor is in a trench in an urban area. Really really hard to expand that to add a 4th track. I know they can't eliminate trucks. And for short distances, shippers will always opt for a truck. But the more than can be shifted to rail, the better for our highways and breathing air. And the Alameda Corridor was highly subsidized by the local governments. And the railroads have added trackage capacity in other parts of the country. They'll do it anywhere where they will get a positive return on investment.
i am sorry to tell u, but your planned route through the panama canal at 2:26 violates the jones act 46 U.S.C.Generally, the Jones Act prohibits any foreign-built, foreign-owned or foreign-flagged vessel from engaging in coastwise trade within the United States. A number of other statutes affect coastwise trade and should be consulted along with the Jones Act. These include the Passenger Vessel Services Act, 46 U.S.C. § 289 the fine will be determined by a different department and you will receive an other notice have a splendorous day
My Dad works for Union Pacific. Evey month they fly him to Las Angeles to catch thieves in the act using a very high tech drone. It's a never ending task.
How much money's worth of goods is sitting on these trains? How much are the freight companies spending on stock buybacks? What are their annual profits? I'm sure there's room in their budget to add a couple security guards that are on the train until it reaches its destination.
Slight inaccuracy: The BNSF and UP yards that you showed handle domestic cargo. The stuff that came in on the ships departs straight from the port to elsewhere in the US.
When these high crime areas that steal off trains are pointed out to law enforcement they always make it sound like something new they did not know about.
The most hilarious part to me is that these trains are so easy to rob simply because of freight companies' hubris and desire to squeeze every penny they can out of every part of their business. Combine that with a city that's infamously expensive to live in, and it's no wonder so many trains are robbed.
As one who follows the railroad industry here are a few background observations. 1. About half the TEUs are loaded on trains in the Ports of LA & Long Beach. The other half are trucked up the 710 to UP's and BNSF's east LA yards. 2. If you could summarize our economy down to "everything made in China is for sale at Wal-Mart", then all of the inter-modal shipping containers that are unloaded in the Ports of LA & Long Beach, and loaded primarily onto BNSF trains traversing its southern Transcon (the fastest and shortest rail linking LA to Chicago) to the Wal-Mart's big distribution center in the Chicago suburbs. Furthermore, the frequency of inter-modal trains on the transcon are a leading to co-incidental economic indicator. This is the same route as Amtrak's SW Chief travels. I used to take the Chief to Flagstaff every year for years. In 2007 at the height of the economy before the great recession I remember passing east bound freights every twenty minutes. Two years later in the bottom of the Great Recession were only encountered an eastbound freight every thirty minutes. I.e. the economy had contracted by a third! 3. The Ports of LA & Long Beach are losing business to Prince Rupert and Vancouver, BC as these Canadian ports are so much further west, the ships flow the ocean currents, and CA"s every increasing smog and anti-business regulations.
UP used to provide security guards for this stretch of rail. But they keep cutting budgets to get those sweet stock buybacks. How else are they going to make $6 billion in profit?
One of my family members (RIP) used to work for a rail company and the workers would all keep the stuff that was taken from the train but left behind due to value/size/whatever since it was written off by the companies. Always had a garage full of random stuff lol
I'm just imagining the anecdotes. "It fell off a train. And by fell off I mean someone stole it but dropped it off the side of the train when they saw something more expensive next to it. It got a little banged up, but the bosses wrote it off and it still works!"
For clarity, the Alameda Corridor wasn't the site of the big heists a couple years ago, it was portions of UP track east of the Piggyback Yard in LA (Alhambra Subdivision) which might sometimes be referred to as Alameda Corridor-East but isn't the same as the line from the ports to the yards.
So, the rail yards are not inside the City of Los Angeles nor patrolled by the Los Angeles Police Department. They straddle the boundaries of the smaller cities of Bell, Commerce, & Vernon. Some of you may have heard of those places because of rampant corruption problems (inspiring the fictional city of Vinci in "True Detective"). As private property, the rail yards are legally the responsibility of the private security, but must coordinate with a handful of local police agencies and a scandal-ridden County Sheriff's Department. Naturally, it's a situation that no one involved really wants to spend money on if they can get away with it. Even the insurance companies have little incentive to get the rail yards to be more secure (but they could make it happen).
You should do the "Great Des Moines Beer Heist" of the late 60's-early 70's. A group of high school kids found that a warehouse full of beer was practically unguarded and over about 2 years stole a LOT of beer. Some Des Moines residents learnt how to use a forklift truck under VERY dubious circumstances, so much so that if a young adult in the Des Moines area passed their forklift licence with flying colours for a few years, was greeted by amused side eye from the forklift tester. To be a bit more serious, a very large amount of beer was stolen.
Years ago, I used to catch out from the UP Shop's Yard (as it was once known before the new IM terminal was constructed). Pre-pandemic, the number of train robberies seemed quite low compared to the present.
@@mrsupremegascon well yeah because people like you made the concept of personal responsibility into a euphemism because you're too chickenshit to just say the quiet part out loud. now we can't have conversations about this shit because everything might be a smokescreen for eugenics
Sam did not mention the fact that almost none of the offenders who are actually caught are prosecuted or have any mark on their record due to weak laws. This results in thieves who were caught just the day before to be back and stealing one day later.
Californian misdemeanor limits are actually more aggressive that many states, and they aren't correlated with crime. For instance, Texas(the most comparable state, since it's the 2nd largest) has a much weaker law, with almost double the price point. It also has double the crime rate than California too though, so arguably it has an effect.
@@letsburn00double the crime rate in what? Property crime and violent crime rates are higher in California according to the fbi for 22, the last year we have stats for. Tbf Texas is not super far behind them but California definitely has more crime. California also has more people.
I don't know where to start with this. Let's do the "lock" thing. They aren't, and never have been "locks" . They are seals. They let the consignee know the shipment hasn't been tampered with. They are designed to be removed by bolt cutter or similar. Their "stoutness" keeps the curious out. That's it. They have never been "locks" or meant to function that way. Now, let's do the long train thing. Trains with marine boxes on them have been over a mile long for over three decades. They have had just two people on the locomotive for over three decades. The engineer and conductor's job is to move the train from A to B. Do you really think trains that are two miles long have are harder for the crew to monitor? No. They can only see back a few cars under most circumstances. Are longer trains slower? Generally no. The locomotives are distributed throughout the train such that the HP/weight ratio of long trains is the same as for shorter ones. They locomotives in the middle and rear are radio controlled from the front. So why theft? You left out the most obvious answer. Inside information. Inside information. As it has always been. A clerk at the port or on the RR is paid by the mob or gang doing the thieving to get the box initial and number and position in train. Then it's easy picking. 80" TVs yes please! LG refrigerators? No thanks. You're not figuring out which box has which by "guessing well." I have more, but I have real work to do...
The social consequences of this does not factor into the profit-cost-loss equation. There is an emotional component to this kind of theft. I can easily imagine my younger self doing this for the rush of adrenaline and the satisfaction of a job well done. Material gain is a motive, but don't rule out those emotional factors.
You forgot two massive factors with this. The high cost of living in the LA area, and the massive homeless problem in the area. With all these people struggling to survive in such an expensive area it increases the theft by a lot. Poor people have less to lose and more to gain from this kind of theft, and are therefore far more likely to commit it than rich or even middle class people. And by “this kind of theft” I mean the standard stuff, not the embezzlement or insider trading theft rich people do all the time. That stuff is different, it has a much higher bar for entry, but comes with way bigger payouts and much smaller penalties, because of government corruption.
They should make a doorlock that locks itself with pins they place under the container, like the pins that hold them in place, you gotta move it to open it, but you aren’t opening cargo on trains unless its being stolen anyway
the perfect crime doesn't exist... wait a minute: you can rob a 3 mile long train while moving because nobody is gonna check the containers? i think i understand the californian train problem 🤣
4:00 Don't rail companies literally have their own police? Not private security, but actual police with arrest powers? I remember this being a thing because of the miles of railway the government couldn't afford to police, so they made a deal to let the railways do it?
I was wondering about this recently. I was in north Tucson, AZ a month ago and about 1 out of 10 containers on a train that passed heading south along the I-10 were wide open. Interesting video!
Sad to see Amy wasn't sent to see how easy it would be to steal a dog speaker from a train
Amy's in New York and since when would HAI be willing to pay for her to go to LA?
@@forgottenfamilyTrue, they clearly cannot stomach paying for travel.
It was too simple of a job for Amy :P
@@logan_pageBut you could pay it off with dog speakers!
@@logan_page I heard the Wendover guy pays for his staff to travel.
Fun fact: The proprietors of both Suez and Panama canals know exactly how much fuel each type of ship uses per nautical mile it travels. The cost of using their canal is slightly under the fuel cost of not using their canal.
/Retired merchant mariner.
Time wasted going all around Africa isn't free either
@@kacperslaczka6290for cargo ships it mostly is since the crew is small
@@Daniel-yy3ty But ship is expensive af. You can either make a round trip in 35 days through a canal or in 50 days going around Africa.
@@kacperslaczka6290 Yep, and in 2-1/2 trips, you've already missed out on one load.
In a Year, that is 8-10 shorter trips or 6-7 longer trips.
I would be very surprised if it weren't that way.
"This is the LockPickingLawyer, and today I'll attempt to see if I can open this large container I found - I mean a viewer sent to me."
The receivers don't even have a key to the locks. We just have bolt cutters for the locks anyways
@@matthew8505 So we're, I mean, those dastardly criminals, are saving you time even
Idk, sounds more like something McNally would do, and just omit the whole "found this" detail. Gets in, does his thing in under two seconds, yeets the lock to Can Toss Guy in a morph suit, opens the door, and then the video cuts.
Of course, to his typical upbeat intense music.
and to open it they throw a container at it.
I read it in his voice 😂
I've seen enough train surfing videos and Lockpicking Lawyer videos to know that both the cargo rail industry and padlock manufacturing industry took the same approach to safety: "Well yeah, but who will really bother?"
Most locks are just there to keep honest people honest. A lock that can keep out someone with a reasonable level of lock-picking skill (or just a really big pair of bolt cutters) is going to be expensive, and until the losses from theft start to approach the cost of outfitting all the containers with those locks nothing's going to happen. I'm not sure that this is an unreasonable view for train companies etc. to take.
@@Michael75579 As a Home Depot employee, _exactly this._ The locks and cages are there to _inconvenience_ thieves (and employees and legitimate customers alike), a determined thief _will_ get through (for fscks sake, _we sell bolt cutters that AREN'T locked up,_ what does corporate expect is going to happen???).
@Michael75579 ok but there is a difference between a half decent made lock and a MasterLock.
The most popular lock brand in the states is so bad at being a lock that you can pretty much open it with a rock, leaving the owner none the wiser that someone broke into their precious stuff.
You can find plenty of locks for cheaper that do a better job is the problem
@@Depl0rable10 "If their stuff was precious they wouldn't be using MasterLock" is perhaps not the best slogan for MasterLock to run with in their advertising, but is a totally valid consumer mindset nonetheless (actually probably the correct consumer mindset).
@@Depl0rable10Even if you do invest in better locks, then the next weakest link is the latch/hasp on the door, which is stamped steel. A company I work for has shipping containers for storage of building materials, and have had break-ins where a thief just twists the lock with a long bar until it snaps the latch on the door.
I had a teacher that was a former Chicago Police officer. He said gangs loved to break into rail cars. Years ago they got lucky and found a car full of guns and ammo. Since then, a significant portion of all crime in Chicago used one of those stolen guns.
The rail cars are basically unguarded because the insurance is cheaper than hiring guards for the rail yards
Probably doesn’t help that the city would stand in the way of security from doing their jobs as well
Federal offense and really serious. One rail employee I knew in 1970 simply TOLD a biker crew which car had the bikes and he got 8 years Federal!!
@@DwightStJohn-w1l It does require them to be caught. And 10 years later, you can easily stick them with the illegal gun charge, but the break in at the rail yard would be impossible to prove.
I can tolerate bad security for normal cargo, but bad security for a container full of guns is criminally negligent and should not be a thing.
Tolerating godless leftwing degeneracy is intolerable and makes people an enemy collaborator and enabler.
6:03 Sam says “if you’re wondering whether their insurance companies like this reasoning” and at that moment my RUclips cuts to an ad that begins with “most insurance companies…”
Laughs in YT premium 😁
@@ZZ-vl5ndLaughs in ublock origin 😇
Laughs in uBlock Origin 😁
@@ZZ-vl5nd adblock for the same experience but free
Laughs in Nebula subscription 😁
One time, I accidentally drove my car into the port of Long Beach with hundreds of semi trucks unloading cargo like this Bluetooth dog speaker. I have never felt so small before or since 😳
Hi mr chocolate rain
wait, you can do that by accident? how long ago was this
Isn’t it crazy how much is going on?
@@AmVeryAwesomethere’s no security or precheck. Cost cutting and less efficient logistically; remember how cheap and greedy corporate from the video? What I’m wondering is how they bypassed all the truck traffic to get in.
Chocolate rain!
I don't get why the insurance companies wouldn't update their policy to something like "your insurance is going to cost X more unless your locks meet Y standard of security", I feel like it would be a stupidly easy way for them to increase their profitability
Presumably because they expect that their competitors would successfully yoink their customers by offering cheaper rates.
@@emurphy42Who wants to insure trains that are very likely to get robbed? You get more customers but they’re a bigger liability. It’s like selling life insurance only to overweight 70 year olds who smoke a pack a day.
@@memesthatmakeyouwannadie3133 Presumably the train companies still make them a net profit because the loses to theft are probably fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, but that requires one of two things:
1. The train company to honestly self-report about their security standards
2. The insurance company to go out and inspect the train company's security standards
Both of those cost time and money and everyone involved hates spending either of those things, plus it makes the train companies want to just find someone cheaper with lower standards and it makes insurance companies want to get cheaper with lower standards
@@memesthatmakeyouwannadie3133 I have nothing but blind assumption to back up this idea, but I assume that even with a largeish amount of robbery, it still falls into a similar category as shoplifting at supermarkets- its not ideal, but it can simply be factored into the cost of doing business / shrink at least to an extent
Nike shoes used to "fall off the train" in Kansas City when I was a kid. Openly sold at some major intersections, and cops would get Danner boots from the same sellers. Those boots are so good, the cops are still wearing them.
I wish Danner's would fall off a train near me. $300 to get a new pair hurts the cheap part of the brain. They're so good, though, helped save my feet when I switched from issued.
now a days shoes are less effective as in one container they often only have the left shoe. you would need to find the other container having that contains the right shoe. at least that is what they do for the sea bound leg of the journey.
@sirBrouwer that's actually hilarious if true
@@XIIchiron78 True. Still works for Redwing boots also.
7:28 "Crime bad" "note: out lawyers made us put this line in but it does not necessarily reflect the views of all HaI staff" haha
He definitely does not believe this, lol
3:24 THE BEST THING about this video when the animator who decided to label "water" a SECOND time when they weren't even talking about it anymore
Rip dog speaker. You will be missed
😅
Not by me though. I just got a replacement off the back of a train.
There’s 2 left on Amazon!
Union Pacific does have it's own police force. They downsized massively during Covid, and are now back at slowly hiring more law enforcement officers. At one point I heard there was about 20 law enforcement officers for the whole of the south west region. They are notoriously spread thin still and they barely can respond to all the calls on the railroad tracks.
yup, BNSF has tracks and yards immediately adjacent to UP's in this same area and they have no issues because they never got rid of their security
You call out the Alameda Corridor but then all the shots of trains impacted in LA are from a different Los Angeles rail segment. More specifically Union Pacific's Alhambra subdivision
Ooooo busted
There was this vagabond RUclipsr who hitched a ride on a train and almost got into trouble due to water issues but mainly it was amazing how long the trains were, their delays, and how easy it was to access. And this was 2022 and he was just hitching a ride….
Vagrant Holiday?
There’s literally a whole mission in GTA5 that’s robbing a train in this area.
I worked on something port/railroad related in SoCal and I’m such a nerd I was so excited when I found the Alameda Corridor in GTA V.
I was thinking of that mission while watching this lol
"All we had to do was follow the damn train CJ!"
It's crazy that I have a GTA heists ad below this video
So you're telling me robbing one of these is so easy I wouldn't even have to get off my couch? Sweet!
It's because all they have to do is follow the damn train, CJ.
Ah, a fellow Grove Street alumni.
I've been convinced. Heading over to steal some dog speakers. Thanks for the info
Wait for me, I'm coming too!
@@Logan. *CRIME BAD!*
@@leisti "note: our lawyers made us put this line in but it does not necessarily reflect the views of all half as interesting staff"
@@Logan. DIBS ON THE CAT SPEAKERS
@@Sephiroth144also, DIBS ON THE DUCK SPEAKERS
"Light edutainment." Way to sum up my RUclips tastes so succinctly, Sam.
E
@@EEEEEEEEE
My favorite part was when he said "...and that's why I sent our outside correspondent Amy and her band of delinquents and hooligans to the LA alameda corridor to see how easy it really is to pull off a modern day train heist" SO ICONIC
When we move actual dynamite on the railroad, the 20ft containers are oriented so the doors face eachother. We could do the same thing with valuable goods, but that would take extra time so it's not allowed. 40ft containers with high value goods could go in 40ft well cars, not 53ft domestic ones, but again, cost.
How long would it take to cut a small access hatch into a container with a cordless grinder or two?
@@Jehty_ A lot longer, and more visible/audible that it may be worth.
And how big an access do you cut? Just big enough for your arm to reach in and maybe grab a couple of things? big enough for you to squeeze in? What if the items worth stealing are bigger than your access hole?
That is very common at construction sites here in Sweden (and id assume elsewhere too) where lots of expensive tools are stored in containers with beefy locks, but still just regular walls. Cut a small hole, look insideand if they find something good they cut a bigger hole and just walks in. @@Jehty_
@@Jehty_ These containers are built to be able to be stacked up to like 40 deep, maybe more, so like they're built like tanks.
If it's this simple to secure the goods then it really is just the fault of the railway companies.
The question I have is why don't the insurance companies tell the rail companies "unless you use better locks, we will increase your insurance premiums" or something? If the railroads use better locks, more security and otherwise make stuff harder to get into and steal, there will be less damage and theft and therefore less insurance claims (which is good for the insurance companies presumably) so offering reduced premiums in return for better security seems like it would be a win for the insurance companies.
Because if insurance company A does this, insurance company B immediately goes "our fares are still low!!1!" and steals the clients away before you can blink. Sure, *they* will still have the theft problem, but also more clients so they wouldn't care.
It'd be easier to incentivise existing customers with lower premium than raising rates
The Pittsburgh Penguins just had over 10,000 Jaromir Jagr bobble heads stolen from this area. Curious what the thieves plan to do with them.
Probably dump them in the LA river to become part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, once they sell the few they can.
Jarda Jágr mentioned 🔥🇨🇿🇨🇿🇨🇿
Who wouldnt want bobbleheads of the third ever Czech NHL player to have his shirt number retired
@@dandagames6030 Me. But then, I don't care about sports in general.
Tijuana bound!
The best part of it is, you can force a train to stop without even damaging anything! If you just camp out near a defect detector you can slap the plate of a dragging-equipment detector to make it think there's a loose airhose near the end, or you can wave a cigarette in front of the IR sensor for the hot box detector, and it'll throw a defect and the crew has to stop and check it out. You can also just buy or make a brake stick which can wreak all sorts of havoc, considering how easy it is to make one out of a broomstick and some sheet metal and the fact it can uncouple cars, open brake hoses, close an anglecock to make the FRED throw an air pressure error, or stick the parking brakes on the cars to trip the aforementioned defect detector with a sliding wheel/hot wheel/hot brake defect.
Always the furries who know this kinda shit 😭😭😭
@@gwety4496if there's one thing furries do not fuck around about, it's trains
The quality information I come to RUclips for
Not that you've thought about it, of course...
Tbh I think it would break before you got there because of classic class 1 cost cutting and PSR
In Canada, the railroad companies are allowed to have their own police service to patrol the rails and yards. I wonder what the effect of this is on container security because a major container port in Vancouver is inside the Downtown Eastside, but we never hear of any issues with railroad theft.
US railroads also have their own police departments. I have to agree with the LAPD on this one, Union Pacific has their own cops, they need to police their own property.
UP does too. UP used to provide railroad police for this corridor. There are only a few covering for the whole area thanks to staffing cuts.
UP made $6 billion in profit last year.
@@gerbalblasteWon't somebody please think of the investors!
Rail Road police in the US are federal law enforcement. UP does not want to hire enough police
aren't like stolen cars in shipping containers and police literally do nothing? not hard to assume that they'd be quite useless against theft of shipped contents.
Funny story: My uncle moved a lot of his stuff to Venezuela by shipping container when his house was finally finished, but when it got there apparently there was a snafu between the port and the shipping company because the people driving the container in from the port did not actually have the key. So we took out a bonesaw and cut that lock for something like 90 minutes. It was pretty thick.
That's *still* more safety than one of the US' top rail freight companies carrying vital goods. On a personal shipment in a third world nothing country. Impressive, folks!
5:42 “Surely, better locks exist.”
“This is the Lock Picking Lawyer…”
Better doesn't mean perfect
@@Sephiroth144 Of course. Practically any lock can be picked open. Thus the reference to the Lock Picking Lawyer channel. With his tools, skills, and experience, he can open nearly any lock out there.
@@macmedic892 Oh, I know about LPL; and he gets thru some hefty locks. Which is something of my point- a crappy lock or a really solid lock is likely to fall to someone with his level of experience, though it might take a little more time.
Lots of people cracking jokes about LPL over the locks on the containers, but look at them. He said the _upgraded_ locks are 1/8" thick... "better" should at least mean "toddler-proof" or why even bother with a lock at all?
@@johnladuke6475 because those locks aren't meant to stop people from breaking in, they never were
dissappointed that there is no referral link in the description to buy bolt cutters
Or dog speakers.
@@robbiemer8178why buy them when you can just steal them
I worked on the corporate side of intermodal for four years and am very familiar with the supply chain here. Customers could designate a load to be “high value” so it’d be loaded on the bottom which makes it virtually impossible to open when loaded into a well car. Hefty locks aren’t really necessary for top loads because they are usually deemed lower value and unloading a trailer 15+ feet in the air isn’t very practical but these criminals are desperate. Trailers (containers with wheels/chassis attached) are loaded onto flat cars and are more subject to attack and likely what the criminals target.
In Europe, intermodal trains are not allowed to double stack partly to avoid crime and partly due to smaller tunnels.
Memphis is really bad for train robberies too. When I went about 3 years ago a BNSF cop told us that they had just busted a bunch of people that had 170 TVs in one of the houses. What would happen is Union Pacific interchanges intermodal trains there with CSX and CSX would leave them sitting for three days before taking them. And these trains sat in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Memphis which gave free rein to anyone looking to rob them. It’s still a problem today, I saw an article just the other day that someone was busted for stealing 14 grand worth of TVs off a train.
The HAI Stamp of Uncool?!?!?!?!?!?!
Now my opinion of Union Pacific has really fallen through the floor... stock prices should and shall suffer!
That's what the billions in stock buybacks are for 🤡
UP's business is built around providing shareholder returns, not running a railroad. They do $6 billion / year in profit and pay most of that to shareholders in dividend and stock buybacks.
this is almost past half as interesting it's nearly 10 minutes
half as wendover
You failed English.
Do you mean... it's Just as interesting?
@@internetguy7319That's Twice as interesting
Apparently, the issue is that it would cost more to add the needed security to the area than it would for the insurance payout.
The railroads have the shippers over a barrel and they all know it.
Economics at its finest.
Wait up. That rail corridor is 20 miles long and has trains that could be up to 3 miles long each..? That means one train along could occupy 15% of the entire track at any time. Crazy..
There’s three tracks
Yeah, sounds like it would have made sense to put a conveyor belt there instead... ;)
"tapping the captain on the shoulder and asking are we there yet"😂😂😂😂😂
What kills me is that railroad corporations want no government regulation or interference with their operations, but when they have a problem, they claim that it is the government's responsibility to fix that problem.
As someone who has overseen a short line railroad and who currently manages port infrastructure, thank you for this video!
7:28 The little subtext tells an incredible tale
Hey Ferb…I know what we’re doing today
While the insurance companies may not want to pay for better locks, I'm sure they're quite willing to charge higher premiums to insure this high risk scenario. At some point it would be cheaper for Union Pacific to pay for better locks instead of paying higher premiums.
It would also be worthwhile to understand how two train companies dominate freight traffic.
The train companies have nothing to do with the locks on container doors. That's the shipper's responsibility.
The shipper knows that the chance of any particular container being breached is small, so spending a lot of money on better locks for every container isn't cost effective. And every lock can be defeated by someone with the time to use a battery powered cutter.
The solution is to make criminals FEAR being caught.
Back during the Depression, railroads hired men to protect their trains. These guys had a simple rule -- honest men could ride without being harmed, but the dishonest were given enough pain that they would stay away from trains for the rest of their lives.
I'm not saying it won't work, but circumventing a person's due process by private security over property crime tends not to sit well with both voters and politicians nowadays, not to mention it would be extraordinarily difficult to prevent corruption from affecting the work. One bad move that the press gets a whiff of and it's all over again.
@@h8GW Please cite the poll that you're basing that claim on.
@@SoloPilot6 source: listen to anyone talking about corrupt politicians or law enforcement officers. they usually invoke the constitution and the value of due process to make their argument. regardless, really take a step back and look at you: you're asking for extrajudicial punishment by bands of private enforcers. I hope you don't call yourself an american patriot
Thanks for the tips Sam, can't wait to try this out!
Alemeda Corridor-East is more of a problem than the original Alemeda Corridor. Most of the pictures of boxes littering the rails come from the western section of that project.
The western section of the eastern corridor... and what are the best cross streets to look at? Asking for a friend... who's definitively not texting from Alondra and Santa Fe
Binghamton New York is really bad when it comes to that too. It’s already a pretty bad and deprived city with lots of poor and desperate people. Coupled with a a rail yard right in the middle of it, and trains that often stop just outside that rail yard. I’ll see entire groups of people standing out there and soon as the train stops, they all hop on and start cutting open shipping containers
My favorite episode of Breaking Bad was the train heist episode. It's also an episode I thought was pure bull -- I liked it because it was an intense episode with one of the greatest WTF moments in the entire series.
Turns out, after befriending a train engineer (dude that literally designs trains -- not the guy riding along), this episode of Breaking Bad wasn't just possible but "something exactly like that has almost certainly happened in the past." The hardest part it turns out wasn't the heist itself because, apparently, Walt's plan was actually "really good," but actually knowing exactly which train wagon to rob and being lucky enough to have terrain that would be roughly ideal for stealing that liquid.
However, according to him, if you had a lot of money, knew who to bribe, and the part of the train you robbed was around a bend -- it would be absolutely possible to do what Walt and Jesse did.
When I was a little kid, we had two houses and an alley between us and the tracks...and not just one set, but a switching yard or something like it. From that neighborhood, you can walk right up to the trains with not even a ditch to keep people away. Another kid stole some flares from a caboose. I didn't have the nerve to go into it myself. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that thieves get into trains there once in a while. But this is Illinois, not California.
Mostly, rail companies pay for all those lines, contrary to automobile infrastructure. Sure they’re subsidized, but they control the space and traffic rules. This goes back to the barons of yore, wanting to cash in on monopoly control of logistics. If access was open, with rules of access and navigation established, then the trains wouldn’t be so dang long. Just the traffic jams 😂
@7:55 - A third assumption you might make is that the viewer is a thief who may have overlooked the value of container trains as a target.
Next we need "how to rob a cargo ship" and "how to rob a cargo plane" and the trio will be complete. My self taught supply chain knowledge will make me RICH!
No nonononoooo... need the "how to safely fence/sell things that have 'fallen' of a truck or other conveyance vehicle" to round out the series
These are really good tips, there is also a good spot near here. It's not yet known what is transported there, but you've already given us some clues to help identify this.
Due to this, the insurance royalties should rise, and that would incentivize better locks, right?
The problem is that despite it appearing to be a big problem, for a train company, this is 0.1% of their products. So the insurance cost is negligible compared to their profits. Remember, the theft rates currently are half what they were 40 years ago, so they probably have to rise a lot more before it becomes a problem.
I live near LA and train robberies were a big story about a year or more ago. HAI got the big picture correct about why lots of train robberies happen here, but got a lot of the details wrong. The Alameda corridor isn't a problem to my knowledge. The trains maintain a decent speed throughout it, the entire thing is grade separated, and as they pointed out, a little over half the route is in a giant trench -- with vertical concrete walls. Nobody is robbing a train in the trench (how are you going to get your loot out?).
The intermodal yards might experience some theft, but I'm not aware of that area being a problem. The railroads have their own police and I have to think they do a good job with security at their own yards.
The problem area shown on the news reports was the stretch of track going through Alhambra, San Gabriel, and just north of Cal State LA. Which leave from a third yard not shown in the video (closer to Union Station). The photos shown in this video of the trash from opened boxes was from that exact stretch of track in Alhambra.
There's another track that goes down the middle of the 10 freeway for a few miles, but that's in the middle of the freeway. The two tracks leaving the yards shown in the video I think have the trains running at faster speeds.
There might be more problem areas out near San Bernardino, where more yards are, but I just don't know.
And at 1:56, I think that might be the port of Oakland. Definitely not LA.
Also!
I really wish the railroads could take more of the cargo. We'd have a decrease in pollution (always good), and less traffic on some of our freeways. It depends on the time of day, but I often run into a line of trucks on the 710 and 91 freeways. And trucks cause way more wear on a road than a car.
@@comicus01 more cargo? the trains are already way beyond what should be feasible in terms of length and weight. Sure you can throw in more locos etc. but the mass will cooperate less and less and you only have two people for it. The solution would be new trackage with higher speed limits, more track, electrification, but guess what? Private operators won't do it because costs.
@@monder1060 The ports do not operate 24/7. I don't know if the railroads are pulling cargo out of the port 24/7, but I highly doubt it. They could increase capacity simply by adding more trains throughout the week. It's also possible they could add more trains with signal improvements so they could run more frequently.
Half of the Alameda corridor is in a trench in an urban area. Really really hard to expand that to add a 4th track.
I know they can't eliminate trucks. And for short distances, shippers will always opt for a truck. But the more than can be shifted to rail, the better for our highways and breathing air.
And the Alameda Corridor was highly subsidized by the local governments. And the railroads have added trackage capacity in other parts of the country. They'll do it anywhere where they will get a positive return on investment.
the small text at 7:29 lmao
It’s so cute when non locals pronounce San Pedro “right”
i am sorry to tell u, but your planned route through the panama canal at 2:26 violates the jones act
46 U.S.C.Generally, the Jones Act prohibits any foreign-built, foreign-owned or foreign-flagged vessel from engaging in coastwise trade within the United States. A number of other statutes affect coastwise trade and should be consulted along with the Jones Act. These include the Passenger Vessel Services Act, 46 U.S.C. § 289
the fine will be determined by a different department and you will receive an other notice
have a splendorous day
He already made a video about that ruclips.net/video/8d5d_HXGeMA/видео.html
My Dad works for Union Pacific. Evey month they fly him to Las Angeles to catch thieves in the act using a very high tech drone. It's a never ending task.
The insurance companies should increase the rates if the train companies don’t increase their security.
Hai gotta be the best channel, who else casually teaches you how to rob a train in such detail on the internet.
wake up babe HAI dropped a video longer than 6 minutes
This season on Jet Lag: We see how many trains we can rob and who can do it the fastest.
Unapologetically publishing a detailed tutorial on how to rob big corporations consumer goods trains in the US is a whole mood and I'm here for it 😄
1:53 don’t disrespect the USPS like that. Deliver more Amazon than Amazon in this country.
Plus you have to add in community standards. The area is seeing massive store closings due to theft. Why would the rail yards be different?
Thanks for the tutorial ❤
How much money's worth of goods is sitting on these trains? How much are the freight companies spending on stock buybacks? What are their annual profits? I'm sure there's room in their budget to add a couple security guards that are on the train until it reaches its destination.
Ah. You got there by the end of the video.
Slight inaccuracy: The BNSF and UP yards that you showed handle domestic cargo. The stuff that came in on the ships departs straight from the port to elsewhere in the US.
When will i get to learn about the logistics of prescribed fires
For real!
When these high crime areas that steal off trains are pointed out to law enforcement they always make it sound like something new they did not know about.
The most hilarious part to me is that these trains are so easy to rob simply because of freight companies' hubris and desire to squeeze every penny they can out of every part of their business.
Combine that with a city that's infamously expensive to live in, and it's no wonder so many trains are robbed.
As one who follows the railroad industry here are a few background observations.
1. About half the TEUs are loaded on trains in the Ports of LA & Long Beach. The other half are trucked up the 710 to UP's and BNSF's east LA yards.
2. If you could summarize our economy down to "everything made in China is for sale at Wal-Mart", then all of the inter-modal shipping containers that are unloaded in the Ports of LA & Long Beach, and loaded primarily onto BNSF trains traversing its southern Transcon (the fastest and shortest rail linking LA to Chicago) to the Wal-Mart's big distribution center in the Chicago suburbs. Furthermore, the frequency of inter-modal trains on the transcon are a leading to co-incidental economic indicator. This is the same route as Amtrak's SW Chief travels. I used to take the Chief to Flagstaff every year for years. In 2007 at the height of the economy before the great recession I remember passing east bound freights every twenty minutes. Two years later in the bottom of the Great Recession were only encountered an eastbound freight every thirty minutes. I.e. the economy had contracted by a third!
3. The Ports of LA & Long Beach are losing business to Prince Rupert and Vancouver, BC as these Canadian ports are so much further west, the ships flow the ocean currents, and CA"s every increasing smog and anti-business regulations.
UP used to provide security guards for this stretch of rail. But they keep cutting budgets to get those sweet stock buybacks.
How else are they going to make $6 billion in profit?
Never in my life did I expect HAI to make a Normani reference but here we are. Holy shit.
I screamed
The last time I was this early I was watching Wendover Productions😌
this IS half as interesting as a good video
One of my family members (RIP) used to work for a rail company and the workers would all keep the stuff that was taken from the train but left behind due to value/size/whatever since it was written off by the companies. Always had a garage full of random stuff lol
I'm just imagining the anecdotes. "It fell off a train. And by fell off I mean someone stole it but dropped it off the side of the train when they saw something more expensive next to it. It got a little banged up, but the bosses wrote it off and it still works!"
2:14 if only HAI uploaded this video one day later, it would’ve been on the 3rd year anniversary of the Ever Given incident.
The bolt cutter I ordered on Amazon to crack open container has been stolen in a container heist.
Disclaimer for authorities probably interested in this comment.
This is joke. Thank you for your attention.
For clarity, the Alameda Corridor wasn't the site of the big heists a couple years ago, it was portions of UP track east of the Piggyback Yard in LA (Alhambra Subdivision) which might sometimes be referred to as Alameda Corridor-East but isn't the same as the line from the ports to the yards.
So, the rail yards are not inside the City of Los Angeles nor patrolled by the Los Angeles Police Department. They straddle the boundaries of the smaller cities of Bell, Commerce, & Vernon. Some of you may have heard of those places because of rampant corruption problems (inspiring the fictional city of Vinci in "True Detective"). As private property, the rail yards are legally the responsibility of the private security, but must coordinate with a handful of local police agencies and a scandal-ridden County Sheriff's Department. Naturally, it's a situation that no one involved really wants to spend money on if they can get away with it. Even the insurance companies have little incentive to get the rail yards to be more secure (but they could make it happen).
You should do the "Great Des Moines Beer Heist" of the late 60's-early 70's. A group of high school kids found that a warehouse full of beer was practically unguarded and over about 2 years stole a LOT of beer. Some Des Moines residents learnt how to use a forklift truck under VERY dubious circumstances, so much so that if a young adult in the Des Moines area passed their forklift licence with flying colours for a few years, was greeted by amused side eye from the forklift tester. To be a bit more serious, a very large amount of beer was stolen.
Time to take a trip to southern California... for a vacation I mean... yeah...
Working vacations are a thing
Years ago, I used to catch out from the UP Shop's Yard (as it was once known before the new IM terminal was constructed). Pre-pandemic, the number of train robberies seemed quite low compared to the present.
This really sound like victim blaming.
Just because you don't like the victim doesn't mean it is OK to blame them for the crime against them
Awwww.... is your butt hurt?
Uuuuh, because if he wants to blame the robbers, a lot of people will jump on him and call him racist.
@@mrsupremegascon well yeah because people like you made the concept of personal responsibility into a euphemism because you're too chickenshit to just say the quiet part out loud. now we can't have conversations about this shit because everything might be a smokescreen for eugenics
It'll probably be more expensive to replace and repair any damage to the container if the locks were too good.
Sam did not mention the fact that almost none of the offenders who are actually caught are prosecuted or have any mark on their record due to weak laws. This results in thieves who were caught just the day before to be back and stealing one day later.
Californian misdemeanor limits are actually more aggressive that many states, and they aren't correlated with crime. For instance, Texas(the most comparable state, since it's the 2nd largest) has a much weaker law, with almost double the price point. It also has double the crime rate than California too though, so arguably it has an effect.
@@letsburn00double the crime rate in what? Property crime and violent crime rates are higher in California according to the fbi for 22, the last year we have stats for. Tbf Texas is not super far behind them but California definitely has more crime. California also has more people.
I don't know where to start with this. Let's do the "lock" thing. They aren't, and never have been "locks" . They are seals. They let the consignee know the shipment hasn't been tampered with. They are designed to be removed by bolt cutter or similar. Their "stoutness" keeps the curious out. That's it. They have never been "locks" or meant to function that way.
Now, let's do the long train thing. Trains with marine boxes on them have been over a mile long for over three decades. They have had just two people on the locomotive for over three decades. The engineer and conductor's job is to move the train from A to B. Do you really think trains that are two miles long have are harder for the crew to monitor? No. They can only see back a few cars under most circumstances.
Are longer trains slower? Generally no. The locomotives are distributed throughout the train such that the HP/weight ratio of long trains is the same as for shorter ones. They locomotives in the middle and rear are radio controlled from the front.
So why theft? You left out the most obvious answer. Inside information. Inside information. As it has always been. A clerk at the port or on the RR is paid by the mob or gang doing the thieving to get the box initial and number and position in train. Then it's easy picking. 80" TVs yes please! LG refrigerators? No thanks. You're not figuring out which box has which by "guessing well."
I have more, but I have real work to do...
The social consequences of this does not factor into the profit-cost-loss equation.
There is an emotional component to this kind of theft. I can easily imagine my younger self doing this for the rush of adrenaline and the satisfaction of a job well done. Material gain is a motive, but don't rule out those emotional factors.
"Why did you commit this crime?"
Your honor, it was really funny.
I wasn't expecting to see another example of how our train operators put profit over best practices and public interests...yet, here we are.
You forgot two massive factors with this. The high cost of living in the LA area, and the massive homeless problem in the area. With all these people struggling to survive in such an expensive area it increases the theft by a lot. Poor people have less to lose and more to gain from this kind of theft, and are therefore far more likely to commit it than rich or even middle class people. And by “this kind of theft” I mean the standard stuff, not the embezzlement or insider trading theft rich people do all the time. That stuff is different, it has a much higher bar for entry, but comes with way bigger payouts and much smaller penalties, because of government corruption.
Thanks for these crime tutorials, my profit margins have been through the roof recently!
Might be worth investing in a better roof, before someone robs you.
Has any one else noticed hai videos have slowly getting slightly longer?
3/5 as interesting seems a little sketchy
They should make a doorlock that locks itself with pins they place under the container, like the pins that hold them in place, you gotta move it to open it, but you aren’t opening cargo on trains unless its being stolen anyway
the perfect crime doesn't exist... wait a minute: you can rob a 3 mile long train while moving because nobody is gonna check the containers? i think i understand the californian train problem 🤣
I'm surprised you got through this entire video without a reference to the Breaking Bad train robbery scene.
4:00 Don't rail companies literally have their own police? Not private security, but actual police with arrest powers? I remember this being a thing because of the miles of railway the government couldn't afford to police, so they made a deal to let the railways do it?
I was wondering about this recently. I was in north Tucson, AZ a month ago and about 1 out of 10 containers on a train that passed heading south along the I-10 were wide open. Interesting video!
Soooo HAI just gave is a free money glitch... Show of hands on whos gonna try it?
Sam: “crime bad”
Also Sam: entire series called “Crime Spree”
0:34 you forgot 1. Californias quite lax approach to theft.
As someone who ships a lot of liquified atmospheric gas through that area via rail, I’m glad they haven’t figured out how valuable that is.
It's also probably harder to steal.
Might be a weight/containment issue; also, resale could be a problem