The Light Load: English trucker’s Cadbury Egg caper goes awry

I always wanted to yell, “The cat!” on “Family Feud” if Richard Dawson or Steve Harvey said to name something burglars are likely to steal from a home. It’s bound to be a top-three answer on the board.

But for all the eggnog in Manitoba, I cannot figure out why anybody even followed up on the theft-by-lorry of 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs in Telford, England, let alone charged a man with this “crime.” (For the backslidden Googler — me — a lorry is what our kidney pie-savoring cousins across the pond call a truck. It can also be a woman’s name, so there could be such a thing as “Lorry’s lorry.” In case you wanted to know.)

Anyhow, some bloke not named Lorry — one Joby Pool — made off with a gargantuan haul of these confections in a pilfered truck.

But if you set aside the part about the purloined vehicle, the idea of scolding and imprisoning young Joby for taking a goodly portion of that particular candy off Britain’s hands sounds all kinds of backward.

A quick review for those who have not known the horror. Cadbury Creme Eggs are:

• The Circus Peanut of Bit-O-Honeys.
• The Milli Vanilli of David Hasselhoffs.
• The Vega of Pacers.
• The V.C. Andrews of R.L. Stines.
• The Cheetos lip balm of carbonated yogurts.
• The Peep of … Peeps.

I’m running out of metaphors, but the point is they’re bad. Really bad. Really really bad.

Actually, I should qualify that. The Eggs with caramel have a certain charm. It’s hard to screw up caramel.

But the ones with insides that look like raw egg white and yolk wrapped in a chocolate orb?

No. Just … no.

Egg white that isn’t done is nature’s most incredibly inedible food. The interior of a Cadbury Creme Egg is made up largely of white goo that can never look fully cooked no matter how long you boil, fry, scramble, poach or Benedict it. Who on earth finds that appealing?

Still, confusing as it is that somebody wanted to file charges for the spiriting away of these delicacies — even in a truck hotter than a $2 pistol — what first had me as stumped as a pine tree during furniture season is that the thief knew what the cargo was.

“This is clearly an organized criminal matter,” prosecutor Owen Beale said in court, according to The Guardian. “You don’t just happen to learn about a trailer with that kind of value being available.”

You’re right, barrister Beale, but you miss the point. The knowledge of what he was doing can only be explained if Pool — dubbed “the Easter Bunny” in English law enforcement circles — was engaged not in a criminal act but in a misguided humanitarian one. It beggars belief that he thought he’d rake in the pounds sterling by hawking Creme Eggs out of the back of a filched truck in suburban Stratford-upon-Avon. And what was plan B? Get three other Artful Dodgers to help consume the stash over a few pints of of Guinness?

Seems to me this unhappy soul intended to drive the cargo off the White Cliffs of Dover or at least London Bridge. If so, he should get a suspended sentence, a bill for the lorry’s downtime and a lifetime supply of Snickers.

The Light Load is a look at the world of transportation and logistics through the eyes of an industry greenhorn.

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