industry partners TruckPol now forms part of the newly created ACPO Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service, based at the NPIA site, Ryton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire. TruckPol is a national road freight crime intelligence unit which collates analyses and disseminates data and intelligence on road freight crime from around the UK.

Road freight crime is organised, increasingly violent and is market driven. Criminals respond to demand, travelling the length and breadth of the country to steal goods and vehicles in a number of ways ranging from ‘curtain slash' offences to organised robberies and lorry hijacks.

Our principle aim is to bring together representatives from the police, government and industry, particularly haulage and logistics, shipping, insurance and manufacturing, to share data and intelligence on criminal activity, highlighting emerging trends and ‘hot spot' areas to make the freight transportation and logistics industry a safer place within which to work. TruckPol is the only national unit of its kind which can provide a strategic overview, reporting back on the nature and extent of the problem through the Home Office Vehicle Crime Reduction Section, Serious & organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

TruckPol also maintains a unique and comprehensive national stolen lorry load database . In 2006, over £5 million of stolen property was recovered and identified directly through searches conducted on the database, despite attempts by criminal gangs to evade detection by moving stolen loads across police boundaries, often from one end of the UK to the other.

Although based within AVCIS, TruckPol has a national remit and is a sponsored unit, funded through a combination of sponsorship from industry partners and Home Office grant.