Why So Many Trains Get Robbed in this One Spot 

Sad to see Amy wasn't sent to see how easy it would be to steal a dog speaker from a train

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.

"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."

6:03 Sam says “if you’re wondering whether their insurance companies like this reasoning” and at that moment my RU-vid cuts to an ad that begins with “most insurance companies…”

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

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 😳

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

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.

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

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.

There was this vagabond RU-vidr 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….

It's because all they have to do is follow the damn train, CJ.

There’s literally a whole mission in GTA5 that’s robbing a train in this area.

"Light edutainment." Way to sum up my RU-vid tastes so succinctly, Sam.

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.

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

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

I've been convinced. Heading over to steal some dog speakers. Thanks for the info

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?"

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

dissappointed that there is no referral link in the description to buy bolt cutters

The HAI Stamp of Uncool?!?!?!?!?!?! Now my opinion of Union Pacific has really fallen through the floor... stock prices should and shall suffer!

5:42 “Surely, better locks exist.” “This is the Lock Picking Lawyer…”

"tapping the captain on the shoulder and asking are we there yet"😂😂😂😂😂

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.

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.

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.

this is almost past half as interesting it's nearly 10 minutes

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..

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 😂

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.

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.

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.

It’s so cute when non locals pronounce San Pedro “right”

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!

7:28 The little subtext tells an incredible tale

As someone who has overseen a short line railroad and who currently manages port infrastructure, thank you for this video!

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?

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?

The insurance companies should increase the rates if the train companies don’t increase their security.

Due to this, the insurance royalties should rise, and that would incentivize better locks, right?

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

the small text at 7:29 lmao

Hey Ferb…I know what we’re doing today

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 😄

Thanks for the tips Sam, can't wait to try this out!

wake up babe HAI dropped a video longer than 6 minutes

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

This season on Jet Lag: We see how many trains we can rob and who can do it the fastest.

I KNOW bro did not just try to blame terrorists hating freedom of navigation on "US foreign policy" 💀

The bolt cutter I ordered on Amazon to crack open container has been stolen in a container heist.

lmao not the normani shout out

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

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.

When will i get to learn about the logistics of prescribed fires

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?

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

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 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.

I'm surprised you got through this entire video without a reference to the Breaking Bad train robbery scene.

Thanks for the tutorial ❤

Hai gotta be the best channel, who else casually teaches you how to rob a train in such detail on the internet.

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.

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 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 🤣

Lunchtime rowdies turned train robbers!

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.

Never in my life did I expect HAI to make a Normani reference but here we are. Holy shit.

The last time I was this early I was watching Wendover Productions😌

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.

Time to take a trip to southern California... for a vacation I mean... yeah...

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.

Has any one else noticed hai videos have slowly getting slightly longer?

7:29 read the tiny disclaimer at the bottom left.

All you needed to say was "California's useless criminal justice system. 🙌

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.

0:34 you forgot 1. Californias quite lax approach to theft.

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.

Union Pacific executives: what if we made our trains 10 miles long, using the cheapest parts available, and we'd have them guarded by the cops and staffed by public workers, all that subsidized by the government? Thank God for deregulation!

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...

Do NOT give Walt (Highzenburg) any ideas on how to steal a TRAIN!

The most simple and easy to implement solution to prevent theft of shipping containers on rail cars would be to install steel walls on each side of where the container is, physically preventing the doors from being opened. These containers are already lifted in and out by crane precisely, so it should not be much of an issue.

Soooo HAI just gave is a free money glitch... Show of hands on whos gonna try it?

If they hadn’t legalized shoplifting in California this would be an even bigger problem

Lol this video is full of misinformation. Half-Ass-Research more like.

1:53 don’t disrespect the USPS like that. Deliver more Amazon than Amazon in this country.

It's very simple and didn't require any of the background knowledge as it relates to why LA is used. LA is used because of its geographic location and proximity to major shipping lanes. First, the government of California does not prosecute any of these low level crimes at all, so there are no penalties for these offenses. Second, the area that the trains stop in before leaving on trains going east are some of the most poverty and crime infested areas of the city. Third, whether you like it or not, african americans. The population that lives along the corridor is dominated by one particular race that for some reason commits more than 50% of all crimes in the US despite making up less than 13% of the population. Compton, Cota, Westside, Lynwood, need I say more. These are the roughest areas that foster for the rise of gang violence and the african american community is the most at risk of this for reasons that are outside of their control and within their own control. So, if you're a black youth in any kind of gang, there is no risk of punishment for engaging in this kind of behavior. So you do it.

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.