Not just manhole covers, but pallets too!
Chicago Tribune: Wood pallets are good as gold to some crooks With lumber prices climbing, Chicago is sitting at a crossroads between crime and commerce.Experts say the spiraling price of lumber has made pallets valuable enough to steal, a sharp contrast to just a few years ago when companies let them pile up in factory yards. By some estimates, nowhere in the country sees more of these timber thefts than the distribution hub that is greater Chicago.
“I would imagine it's more frequent and unreported than it should be,” said investigator Patrick Staples of the Northern Illinois Auto Theft Task Force, which last year arrested a man for swiping a trailer full of pallets worth about $2,300. “But if guys do this twice a month, they're making a good living and not getting caught.”
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Bruce Scholnick, president of the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association, said the cost of wood went up as sawmills became more efficient. They were able to use more of each log for furniture or building material, leaving fewer lower-grade scraps that are turned into skids. That caused the price of wooden pallets to rise to about $5 apiece -- and criminals took notice.
and I actually agree with Brooke Beal's statement: recycling is a good thing. Too bad bottles and cans aren't worth collecting yet - think of all the garbage that would be removed from city streets.
The rash of thefts partly explains why Cosentino, of Skid Recycling, recently got out of the business, becoming a pallet broker instead. But some say the rip-offs have a positive side.“You don't see [pallets] lying around anywhere,” said Brooke Beal of the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County. “I live in the city, and you see people push them down the street in shopping carts. Five, six, seven, 10 years ago, you would see them in the garbage.”
As the pallet association's Scholnick noted, the thefts are a reminder of the ravenous demand for his industry's product.
“When a pallet suddenly has that much value, it's good,” he said.
Tags: Chicago, /fulton_market, /West_Loop
