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December 2, 2001
Increased inspections of trucks moving on Florida's roads following the Sept. 11 attacks are yielding not weapons or hazardous materials, but loads of stolen goods.
In the wake of the attacks, the Florida Department of Agriculture ordered the inspection of every truck crossing the state line -- even rented Ryder and U-Haul moving vans.
"We are the first law enforcement you see when you get to Florida," said Doug York, chief of the agency's law enforcement division. The primary function of the department's 174 uniformed officers is stopping illegal trafficking of meat and produce.
Today, however, officers are more closely inspecting the 12 million trucks that stop at the 22 inspection stations statewide each year. And officers chase and pull over an average of 120 trucks a day, most of them rentals that pass inspection stations without stopping.
Florida has a law requiring all cargo trucks stop for inspection.
Before Sept. 11, inspections were little more than ensuring paperwork was in order, especially if the load had no connection to agriculture.
Now, agents check each load to make sure the cargo matches the manifest and the identity of the driver checks out.
The intent is to intercept potential weapons, such as unlicensed shipments of hazardous or explosive chemicals.
While officers haven't uncovered any terrorist threats, they have been making some other finds.
They seized 14 stolen inboard boat motors worth about $100,000 and the truck carrying them, which had been stolen from a Manning, S.C., repair shop. Inside another truck they discovered a $30,000 tractor stolen from a Mississippi farmer. They recovered a stolen all-terrain vehicle stashed in a rental van after the driver failed to stop at an inspection station.
A long-bed trailer missing since 1996 when it was stolen in Chicago was found attached to a tractor cab awaiting inspection.
Authorities long have suspected Florida was a lucrative market for stolen farm and industrial equipment because of metropolitan areas where goods can be moved at a discount and 14 deep-water ports with access to international buyers.
Joe Bradham, chief deputy at the Clarendon County Sheriff's Office in Manning, said the stolen truck carrying the boat motors would have been an unsolvable crime had it not been for the aggressive Florida crackdown.
Robby Lane was talking with detectives at the South Carolina boat dealership his family owns when he got word that Florida officials confiscated the motors, many still in packing crates.
"I couldn't believe it," a grateful Lane said.
"I figure those guys are taking their jobs pretty seriously when you think about how it was something like 5:30 in the morning when they went after that truck."