Thieves Strike for a 2nd Time at Truck Yard in Simi Valley

In the second heist at the site in less than a year, armed robbers broke into a Simi Valley truck yard early Sunday morning and locked two security guards in a trailer before making off with two tractor-trailers loaded with computer equipment, police said.

Six thieves dressed in black and wearing ski masks cut through a chain-link fence at CF MotorFreight at about 12:30 a.m. and drove off in the two tractor-trailers filled with Packard Bell computers, said Officer Darin Muehler of the Simi Valley Police Department.

The trucks and their cargo were worth $400,000, police said.

“They were very organized,” Muehler said. “They definitely knew what they were doing.”

The truck trailers are white and both bear a red and green stripe and the company logo, Muehler said.

The security guards, who were not armed, told police that the robbers bound their hands with plastic ties and forced them at gunpoint into a trailer.

At least one of the thieves was armed with a handgun, the guards told police.

Six hours later, a driver who was dropping off a trailer at the yard on West Easy Street near Madera Road freed the guards after he heard them banging on the trailer, Muehler said. The two guards were not hurt.

There were no suspects as of Sunday night, Muehler said.

Company executives said they considered security at the site to be adequate, calling the robbery a fluke.

“This is not a common thing; it happens occasionally,” said Doug Kline, director of corporate communications for the Menlo Park-based trucking firm. “It just happens to have happened at this site twice.”

In a daring daylight robbery last July, thieves broke into the same trucking terminal and stole five tractor-trailers packed with $1 million worth of designer jeans, videocassette recorders and cameras.

Three of the trailers were loaded with thousands of pairs of jeans and other clothing made by Bugle Boy Industries of Simi Valley. The firm’s national headquarters is located near the freight terminal.

Within several days of that theft, police recovered all of the abandoned trucks, emptied of most of their loot.

None of the stolen merchandise has been recovered, police said.

Two of the trucks, their ignitions damaged after thieves hot-wired them, were found in the Los Angeles County communities of Lynwood and Vernon, two in El Sereno near Los Angeles and one along the San Diego Freeway in Orange County.

Although the trucking company offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrests and convictions in connection to the theft, no one has been arrested in that FBI-assisted investigation, Muehler said.

At the time of the first robbery, investigators on the case said they suspected the heist was part of a statewide, cargo-theft ring. They said that professional fencing rings can quickly dispose of merchandise through flea markets and other outlets.

Investigators were unavailable for comment on Sunday’s robbery.

“We’re not sure if there’s a connection between the thefts,” Muehler said, “but we’re going to be looking into that possibility.”

CF MotorFreight is a subsidiary of Consolidated Freightways Inc. of Palo Alto, one of the nation’s largest long-haul trucking companies. The terminal is one of 650 that the firm operates in North America.

Until the first theft, company executives called the Simi Valley truck yard the smoothest operating terminal in the firm.