Thursday, June 03, 2010

Mexican Resin Thieves

Plasics News reported last week that the Mexican government is going to be cracking down on the stealing of resin trucks. "There’s been a resins black market in Mexico for many years...Gangs attack the trucks and steal the resins. It happens every month...It may be as much as 1,000 metric tons a year."

Who knew? But resins? Most are only worth a dollar or two and you would certainly get less on the black market. Why not steal something of greater dollar density ($/cm3) like pharmaceuticals?

2 comments:

Eric F. Brown said...

My favorite Mexican truck story is this one: http://www.window.state.tx.us/border/ch09/cobalto.html

The truck containing the radioactive rebar got lost in Los Alamos, NM and set off one of the radiation alarms.

John said...

That story is both so funny and sad at the same time.

My favorite line is this: "...tests established that the capsule had been delivered on or before December 6--a date fixed with certainty because all paperwork generated at the site after that date turned out to be radioactive."