One company has begun to hire armed guards to escort its drivers in California.
The company, Core Mart, is among those who are providing extra security for their delivery drivers. When its parent company was contacted by NBC Bay Area for a statement, they declined to explain the reason for doing so.
According to local authorities, there was a spike in robberies of delivery trucks about two years ago, though there has not been another spike lately that might necessitate such drastic action.
One delivery driver who works for a different company, Flavio Lopez, spoke to NBC Bay Area about his experience trying to deliver. While he says he hasn’t been robbed, he’s had a few run-ins and wishes he’d had an extra set of eyes on his merchandise.
“Stuff you gotta deal with downtown. It is what it is,” Lopez said.
Retired San Jose officer Darrell Cortez echoed similar sentiments, lamenting the state of apparent lawlessness that seems to have a grip on American cities.
“Unfortunately, this is what society has become now with armed guards guarding merchandise from the retailer because there seems to be a sense of lawlessness in our society,” he said. “It’s very unfortunate. You and I pay for it. The consumer pays for it on the backend because prices increase because the merchandise is going out the door and no one is stopping the bad guys because of the threat of violence.”
Cortez believes that if one company has decided to supply its drivers with armed escorts, that could mean other companies will follow suit in the future.
January 2024, a pair of delivery truck heists in Tennessee targeted a FedEx and a UPS truck. In both cases, groups of men dressed in black including ski masks stole a large number of packages from the trucks.
Long-distance trucker Robert Kwasniewski detailed his own experience of being victimized while just trying to stop at a gas station.
“Open the door to get out, and I see a guy run from the back of my trailer with a box in his hands. I’m like, ‘Man, what are y’all doing?'” he said, claiming the incident made him wary of stopping in Memphis.
“It’s a shame and it is scary, but I am not coming through Memphis anymore, and I’m not even going to stop,” the trucker vowed. “Which puts us as truck drivers in a bad position because coming from Michigan going West, you exactly run out of time right on the border, right before you get to Arkansas you are going to run out of time.”
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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