How Eastern European organised crime gangs slashing lorries and stealing items are pushing up the worth of your buying

Driving up and down motorways day and night bearing everything from food to fuel, Britain’s lorry drivers are the vital backbone that keep the country going.

But with almost 90 per cent of Britain’s freight moved by road it’s of little surprise that they’re an increasingly regular target of Britain’s seedy criminal empires.

Drivers forced to stop at unsafe and insecure rest stops are having curtains slashed and doors forced open on trailers, their contents nabbed by cash-motivated thugs who sell them online to unwitting shoppers.

Crooks are employing increasingly sophisticated and sinister tactics – including, it is claimed, gassing drivers – leaving truckers fearing for their safety, or even rethinking their careers.

Security experts say the crime is not opportunistic: instead, it’s the work of organised gangs – some Eastern European – using ‘inside men’ in warehouses to then ambush drivers with weapons, threatening them at gunpoint or with hammers.

Phone shipments worth millions, food, alcohol, and cigarettes are all being stolen to be sold on the black market. Gangsters are even buying up sub-contractors and offering to deliver goods – only to steal trailers of products for themselves.

Freight crime has a far-reaching impact: since 2020, it is thought to have cost the economy more than £1bn, and the fallout is pushing up insurance premiums and security costs, ultimately hitting shoppers at the checkouts.

And it’s happening more: the Road Haulage Association, which represents lorry firms, says £111million of goods were stolen from lorries in 2024, up almost two thirds from £68m the year before. 

The haulage industry, meanwhile, says drivers need more and better facilities that are truly secure. Many truckers have to stop in laybys and industrial estates to sleep overnight because there are no secure facilities available – leaving them vulnerable. 

‘It’s pretty disgusting, if I’m honest with you,’ said driver Lenny Carvill, whose curtain was slashed at a service station on August 14 at around 4.30am. He lost nothing – but thieves stole cartons of cigarettes from another truck, dropping them as they fled.

Speaking in a video he filmed hours after the theft, provided to the Mail, he said: ‘Us drivers, we need our sleep, not being woken up by somebody trying to make a living by robbing vehicles just for the sake of robbing vehicles.

‘The cost of the damage to our vehicles is crazy. And you wonder why the cost of living is going up. Because people like these are robbing – they put the prices up.’

Lorry driver John-o, who asked only to be referred to by his first name, told the Daily Mail his lorry’s curtains have been slashed several times by opportunists checking if the goods are worth stealing.

‘I’ve probably had my curtains slashed seven or eight times – more often at motorway services than anywhere else. I’ve had fuel stolen too. Usually, you’ll see seven or eight trucks done at the same time,’ he told the Mail.

‘It’s unnerving. You do start thinking about what else these guys are going to do. All I want to do is do my job, get a sleep in and wake up without anything happening. It’s stressful.’

John-o is usually carrying cargo of little interest to thieves like fertiliser, but recipients can and will refuse delivery if curtains have been damaged. That means goods must be driven back, repackaged, and sent again – at huge cost to often-small firms.

The driver, who shares many of the thefts on his YouTube channel Truckin’ Around With John-o, added: ‘Even if they’re not stolen, if there’s damage to the goods from slashing the curtain they [the client] will return the whole load. That’s more fuel for us.

‘There are places I’ve parked up in the past that used to be okay – but you can’t park there anymore. And it’s definitely worse at this time of year, when it gets darker much earlier.’

Each time a lorry is hit, the knock-on costs can be huge, from repairing curtains and doors to rising insurance premiums – not to mention the delays to a driver’s journey while they deal with the police.

Each of these costs ultimately end up being passed to the consumer, according to Lee Grundle, a security expert who runs consultancy firm Supply Chain Security.

‘The haulier’s insurance gets hit. Their premiums rise, and the suppliers take a hit because of the additional cost of products. And that has an impact overall and pushes prices up to the customers at retail,’ he said.

Thieves act in conniving ways – from the silent and sneaky to the barely believable. Some of the crimes are opportunistic, but a great deal of them are the work of professional gangs employing tactics straight out of a spy film.

According to the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS), which policies freight crime, most thefts take place at the side of the road (43 per cent) and at motorway service stations (32 per cent). But thieves also carry out ‘jump-up’ thefts, where they run up and climb into the back of lorries at traffic lights. 

Then there is the work of cunning professionals who gather intelligence on where the most valuable goods may be coming from, and work out when and where they are likely to be from drivers’ rest patterns, known routes and gaps in security.

Some of this, Mr Grundle says, can come from informants who enter the supply chain via recruitment agencies as warehouse workers or drivers. Sometimes, it’s down to old-fashioned homework.

One industry source said: ‘Overall, I think a lot of it, is Eastern Europeans coming into the UK: they’re very organised workers across various warehouses, hired through agencies, who know what’s in the warehouse, know what vehicles are being loaded, that sort of thing.’ 

Rhys Hackling, who operates Direct Connect Logistics, explained: ‘One of the big targets is whisky, because [thieves] know where the whisky distilleries are and they know drivers can only drive four and a half hours before needing a break. 

‘They can make very good guesses at where people are going to be parked up with whisky on board. It’s the same for every consumer product out there. If you know where they’re leaving from, you realise it’s not difficult to steal goods.’

Anything is up for grabs with the right plan: a lorry carrying 12,000 brand new Samsung folding phones worth £8million was hijacked by thugs near Heathrow Airport in August, as reported by Korean news agency Yonhap News. 

And in October, thugs stole an electronics shipment from a moving lorry en route to Coventry in October. This method, known informally as the ‘Romanian rollover’, typically sees crooks climb out of the sunroof of a tailgating vehicle and tossing goods back before returning and speeding off. It’s as rare as it is dangerous.

Some drivers have spoken in worried whispers about so-called ‘gassing’ attacks – where truckers are knocked unconscious so thieves can work without disturbance.

Lorry driver John-o says it comes up in HGV Facebook groups, but has never heard of one first-hand. Mr Grundle has heard tales too – but remains ultimately sceptical, and questions whether the tales are cover stories for heavy sleepers.

‘I’ve had a theft where that had been insinuated – but I can only work on facts, and there was no real evidence to suggest it had happened,’ he says. 

The Royal College of Anaesthetists attempted to put it to bed a decade ago, noting that such a gas is unlikely to exist.

Stolen items end up on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Gumtree, Vinted and anywhere else where they can be sold to ordinary shoppers unaware they’re buying hot goods.

This is all on the radar of NaVCIS, which gathers data and trends on vehicle crime and shares it with haulage firms. But industry experts believe the true cost of retail theft is much higher than is being reported because of how the police currently collects data.

Tom Chisholm, NaVCIS Deputy Head of Unit, told the Mail: ‘Freight crime comes in many different crime types and is seen as being ‘low risk, high reward’. 

‘The largest threat that we see in the UK is from curtain-slashing offences, whilst lorries are parked overnight and drivers are sleeping in their cabs, and large consignments of goods are stolen. 

‘We also see incidents of lorries having fuel stolen from their fuel tanks: more than 1,700 last year.’

There is no police recording code for freight crime. At present, the theft of thousands of pounds of goods is recorded as the same as a smash-and-grab handbag theft from a car.

But Labour MP Rachel Taylor, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Freight and Logistics, has scored a victory for lorry drivers after the Government agreed to a trial of ‘tagging’ freight offences in the West Midlands. She has tabled a bill to create a new freight crime code so it can be logged and tracked properly.

She is well aware of the threat posed by haulage theft gangs: a fifth of her working constituents are employed in the logistics industry. She hopes the trial will reveal the true scale of the problem – and inspire a drive to do more.

Ms Taylor told the Mail: ‘It was staggering when I first started looking at this. We had this perception that freight crime was opportunistic, that someone might just slash a curtain and see some Skechers and think they’ll take some.

‘But it’s not. It’s serious organised crime, to the extent they’re turning up to warehouses as fake companies and making off with millions in goods. 

‘At the end of the day it’s people like you and I that are paying for it: it’s putting up prices in the shops, and things are not arriving when they’re meant to.’

On the side, NaVCIS suffering from a criminal lack of funding, the industry says. Despite being a national police unit it receives almost no government cash – instead being funded by cargo firms who pay an annual membership fee.

At the end of 2025, minister of state for policing and crime Sarah Jones told Parliament the Government has ‘no plans’ to provide NaVCIS with direct funding.

Mr Grundle added: ‘It’s a police department, and I just don’t get why they’re not getting the support. The government should fund this, give them the tools to do the job properly, and make it a free service.’ 

On occasion, criminals are brought to justice: three thieves who stole trailers carrying £1million of goods, including publicly funded laptops meant for disadvantaged children, were jailed for a total of 22 years in December 2022. 

Matthew Wilkes, 31, Alan Edwards, 39, and Conrad Pearce, 25 stole an HGV cab and used it to drive trailers away from transport hubs across the country, deploying scanners, key cloners and tracker and tracer radios to track vehicles.

NaVCIS arrests hundreds each year over theft. The National Police Chiefs Council has appointed its first lead on freight crime, DCC Jayne Meir. Its specialist unit for organised acquisitive crime, Opal, has vowed to start targeting the issue next year.

But there is still work to do. Haulage firms want to see truck stop operators do their part to make car parks truly secure in order to dissuade would-be thieves.

Rest areas charge truckers for the privilege of stopping when their legally mandated driving time runs out. But most of those stops aren’t truly secure, lacking good lighting, manned security and CCTV.

Lenny Carvill, the lorry driver whose curtains were slashed at 4.30am in August, was targeted at a brand new Moto service station at Sawtry, near Peterborough.

‘The chance of catching a criminal in the process of trying to break into a vehicle is incredibly low,’ says logistics boss Rhys Hackling. ‘We need places we can park vehicles where they are secure and the chances of a break-in are next to zero.’

Capacity is also insufficient: the RHA estimates Britain needs 11,000 more lorry parking spaces. This means drivers are being forced to stop in lay-bys or industrial parks – putting themselves at greater risk of being targeted.

Trucker John-O: ‘Most stops are full by 4-5pm. You can pay £30-50 a night depending on where you are, just to park on a bit of tar. Clearly they could afford security, but they don’t bother. There are times I struggle to sleep.’

The Government launched a £20million match-funding programme for truck stops in 2022, offering to match private investment in improvements ranging from driver facilities through to improved security.

Some lorry-focused transport hubs meet the Parking Security standard enforced by the Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA), a pan-European logistics security alliance, or the Park Mark Freight standard – but not nearly enough.

Tom Chisholm, of NaVCIS, added: ‘Twelve sites are now accredited [Park Mark Safe] in the UK. We would like to see more motorway service stations joining the scheme to keep drivers safe.’ 

The Mail asked all three major motorway service firms for comment: each stated its commitment to keeping HGV drivers safe. 

A Roadchef spokesperson said all of its sites are monitored by ‘comprehensive CCTV and thermal imaging’, with many sites also supported by perimeter fencing. It says it works with police forces and NaVICS to help prevent freight crime.

The spokesperson added: ‘A number of our locations have achieved Parking Security certification in partnership with TAPA, reflecting our ongoing dedication to creating a secure environment for all who use our sites.’

Welcome Break’s operations director Gary Steele said the firm had invested £1.7million in improvements to its HGV parks in 2024 through the Government’s match-funding scheme, adding that the firm works with NaVCIS to share intelligence.

He added: ‘Our sites have 24‑hour monitored CCTV, enhanced lighting, and a visible security presence, and we are actively working towards achieving the Park Mark Freight standard.’

Moto said it has invested £3.5million in security across HGV parking in the last year, match-funded by the Government, and has on-site security personnel at 15 locations during ‘dusk hours’. It claimed these had led to a 35 per cent reduction in incidents. 

The firm added: ‘We are proud to have received TAPA Partner status for parking security standards and many of our sites already meet or exceed key elements of the Park Mark Freight standard while we will continue to invest in improving security across our network.’

But MP Rachel Taylor wants to see the Government overhaul rules for truck stops to make it easier for them to be approved for development – creating competition, and an incentive for operators to up their game.

She has successfully convinced Welcome Break to allow police to stop in for a free meal overnight at hotspot Corley Services in her constituency – creating a visible deterrent for any would-be thieves each night.

‘Especially at this time of year: it’s the freight industry that delivers Christmas,’ she noted pointedly.

‘Our food in the shops, everything we order online… they’re Santa’s reindeer and elves. We wouldn’t have Christmas without our HGV drivers.’