Trucks transporting goods for e-commerce giant Amazon used to be a frequent target for thieves in the greater Mexico City metropolitan area, where the company has two distribution centers.

But thanks to the implementation of a successful anti-robbery strategy, Amazon hasn’t suffered any holdups on the roads during the past three months.

Since January, trucks leaving the company’s warehouses in Cuatitlán Izcalli, México state, have traveled in convoy, while security vehicles also accompany the trucks during times when robberies have been shown to be more frequent.

Amazon has also increased its cooperation with security authorities.

Consequently, robberies gradually became less frequent before stopping altogether.

The director of loss prevention at Amazon México told transportation news website T21 that the introduction of the new security strategy followed a meeting between directors of several other companies that were also suffering losses due to highway robbery.

“We analyzed the modus operandi [of the thieves], the common problem that we had, and drew up a risk map of the areas where they were stealing from us . . . the next step was to decide what joint actions we could take,” Héctor Coronado said.

“We activated the protocols among the whole group . . .The benefit is that we share intelligence and counter-intelligence,” he explained.

Before the strategy was put into action, Coronado said, Amazon was the target of at least one robbery a week and that theft from a single truck resulted on average in a loss of 5 million pesos (US $ 245,000) worth of merchandise.

Highway robbery is a growing problem in Mexico, with the number of reported cases affecting trucks almost doubling last year.

To combat robbery and improve security on the nation’s highways, federal Transportation Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said Thursday that the government is planning to have 5,000 kilometers of video surveillance installed by 2020.

Source: T21 (sp)