Armed Robbery Growing Problem for Truckers

March 10, 2010— -- Eleven years ago, Tom Connors signed up for the trucker's lifestyle.

He's never looked back.

"It's a different kind of life, but you get used to it," Connors said, leaning back against the grill of his 18-wheeler and grinning as the burnt orange paint of his truck gleams in the Arizona sun.

"There's nothing like it," he added. "Being out on the road always gives you something new to talk about."

But in recent years, there's been a new threat to his lifestyle, aside from the normal road hazards.

"You always have to be alert when you're out there," Connors, who's in his early 50s, said. "It's just not safe."

Just recently, a truck driver in Phoenix was robbed at gunpoint at a rest stop in the early morning hours. The two gunmen forced him to drive to another location where they stole his cargo and took off, getting away with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of electronics.

The driver was not hurt in the incident.

According to the latest FBI statistics, 859 trucks were robbed in 2009, up from 767 trucks in 2008 and 672 in 2007.

Clayton Boyce, vice president of public affairs for the American Trucking Association, the largest national trade association for the trucking industry, is skeptical that truck hijackings are in the rise.

"You never know if it's a case of more people reporting the crime or if it's really going up," Boyce said. "I know there's more attention being placed on the problem now, though."

But Connors said he is one of those statistics. Last November, he was robbed at a truck stop in Ohio.

"I was sleeping in my truck, and then all of a sudden, the whole vehicle started to shake," Connors said. "I thought it was because of the storm outside, but later I looked down between the seats where I keep my bag and it was gone. And then I checked my door and I said, 'Oh, my.' I forgot to lock the darn thing."