$1 million silver bullion stolen in transit from Sydney to Melbourne

Police are trying to figure out how someone could steal a tonne of silver bars from the back of a truck on the nation’s busiest highway and no-one knew about it for three days.

Police are trying to figure out how someone could steal a tonne of silver bars from the back of a truck on the nation’s busiest highway and no-one knew about it for three days.

On a Friday afternoon three weeks ago 192 silver bars weighing five kilograms each were loaded onto a silver Krueger trailer pulled by a Kenworth truck from a warehouse in Western Sydney.

The driver then took off bound for Melbourne with the cargo worth more than $1 million.

It is believed that when the truck stopped at a rest area that evening at Maldon, near Picton south of Sydney, somehow the load of silver bullion was stolen from the truck.

One of the 5kg silver bars.

They were packaged in these boxes.

“How you transfer nearly a tonne of silver from one truck to another is the question, you don’t put that in the boot of car or even a four-wheel drive,’’ a police source said.

“That is not a simple operation which can be done in five minutes.

“You would have to back another truck up to the rear of the trailer and unload it.”

The officer said, unless a substitute weight was put into the trailer, the truck’s behaviour when driving would have been noticeably different.

”And there are cameras everywhere up and down that highway to monitor truck speed and driver fatigue so tracking its movements will help investigators track the truck and any suspect vehicles behind it,’’ he said.

The vehicle is believed to have made five or six stops, which is mandatory for driver fatigue safety reasons.

The theft was discovered when the truck arrived in Melbourne and was to be unloaded at 8am on Monday November 29.

“One of (the lines of inquiry) is that there is inside knowledge involved,” Detective Acting Superintendent Paul Smith said.

“It’s certainly very unique, these type of bars, they’re quite large and quite heavy and they’re stamped with a identifier on them, he said.

Police have not released details of who the silver belongs to or exactly where it was loaded in Sydney but said the driver and freight company are co-operating with their investigation.

“Luckily, we don’t see much of it. We don’t want to see it become a trend,’’ he said.

the truck, .”

The consignment weighed a total of 960 kilograms valued at $1.015 million and was reported to Victorian police initially but now is in the hands of NSW Police.