Daredevil crooks climb onto moving lorries, break in through the rear doors and hurl the goods inside to their mates following closely behind. It sounds like a scene from Mission: Impossible - but it'

An HGV driver pulls off the M3 motorway and into a service station, stopping for the night after having picked up a load from a warehouse outside Southampton. Gangs will often cut into the side 'curtains' of lorries and steal-to-order the load inside, according to the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service Slash-and-grab raids on vehicles transporting goods are becoming more common on Britain's motorways Only this week, it emerged that in mid-December a truck carrying 400 50-litre kegs of Guinness – equivalent to 35,200 pints – was stolen from a logistics hub near Daventry in Northamptonshire. Soaring olive oil prices has seen thieves targeting lorries carrying cargoes of the ‘liquid gold’; one lorry parked in a Doncaster layby had £5,000-worth of Filippo Berio olive oil stolen while its driver was sleeping. ‘We need motorway service stations that are secure, that prevent people coming in and looking around and that are well-lit and properly managed.’ Many drivers of soft-sided vehicles now resort to leaving their rear doors open so thieves can see that what they are carrying is not worth stealing or that they have no load at all. Haulage firm director Tremayne Johnson says gangs can carry out the thefts quickly and quietly, so there needs to be far more 24-hour security in overnight-stay lorry facilities ‘Curtain-sided trailers are stupendously easy to cut open with a knife,’ says Tremayne Johnson of Bartrums Haulage, which has 200 lorries on the road each week.