What is it with freight theft and poultry these days?
Is inflation getting bad enough to spur some plucky truckers to steal chicken and chicken-ish foodstuffs to hawk on the black market?
The sky may not be falling, but something is a-fry in the transport of edible fowl, at least if authorities on two continents are to be believed.
The latest incident involves a bit of chickeny goodness that sheriff’s deputies in Sumter County, South Carolina, accuse delivery driver Christopher Thomas, 55, of nearby Florence, of selling instead of, well, delivering.
Authorities are tight-lipped on whether the purportedly purloined protein was from the superior sector of the chicken — the thigh — or drier, less meaty regions. (I’m looking at you, wings.) But the total came to 33,000 pounds of bird, they allege.
The turkey-eyed among you have deduced that shakes and bakes out to 16.5 tons. That would make barrels of Green Chicken Enchilada Soup, with enough left over to feed Salsa Verde Chicken Nachos to a battalion of small, flightless birds come game day parties on Jan. 8 (when I must reluctantly hope Alabama is beating the dressing out of Texas after shish kebabing Michigan).
Anyhow, authorities say Thomas was transporting the soon-to-be-hot (and not in the Nashville sense) chicken when somebody tipped them off about a rendezvous between the driver and a would-be buyer. They say by the time they got there, the truck held only about 8,000 pounds of its original 41,000-pound load, hence the mystery of the missing tonnage.
The tab for the full load: a reefer-cool $80,000.
Was Thomas feathering his bank account? No clue. We can only hope the well-gravied gears of justice peck their way to a fair conclusion. (Sorry, sometimes you have to suspend logic and physics to keep the extended metaphor going.)
But I’m not holding my Popeyes-perfumed breath. I quail to think how justice was spurned after a similar incident across the Atlantic.
In a rotisserie-hot update we’ve all been waiting for regarding another (vaguely) chicken-related transgression, the fate of Joby “Easter Bunny” Pool has been sealed in yon Telford, England.
Lorry driver Pool was set upon earlier this year by (if you ask me) misguidedly zealous prosecutors over the celebrated spiriting away of 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs.
As I’ve detailed previously so there is no need to repeat it, Cadbury Creme Eggs are:
- The jug wine of Colt 45s.
- The “Suddenly Susan’s Not So Funny” of “Saved by the Bells: The New Class.”
- The Monza of Fiat Multiplas, and yes, still …
- The Peep of Peeps.
But what is driver Pool getting for trying to spare hundreds of thousands of Britons from this chocolate-and-fake-yolk-and-egg-white concoction? A year and a half — not at a Caribbean resort, no, but in prison!
Actually, Pool (#JusticeForJoby) is serving nine months, including six months of hard time already served by the time he was sentenced.
But it’s still harsh for one so civic-minded.
No justice, no Peeps! No justice, no Peeps! No …
Wait. That’s the wrong incentive.
No justice, more Peeps!
The Light Load is an occasional look at the world of transportation and logistics through the eyes of an industry greenhorn.
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