Chinese truck tracker goes offline after user numbers surge in wake of cooking oil scandal

The Post’s calls to the same service line went unanswered.

The site was designed primarily for logistics firms and the mobile app allowed cargo owners to pay to track a specific truck.

But this week it saw visitor numbers spiking as members of the public started trying to follow the routes taken by trucks alleged to have been used to transport both fuel and cooking.

The app began to restrict tracking queries on Tuesday, before taking down the function the following day, according to 21st Century Business Herald.

Last week The Beijing News, a state-backed newspaper, said it was an “open secret” in the industry that the same tankers were being used for both fuel and food deliveries, including cooking oil, and the vehicles did not get cleaned between deliveries to save money.

It named a subsidiary of state stockpiler Sinograin, and the Hopefull Grain and Oil Group, a private firm, as two of the companies affected.

On Tuesday, an influencer known as Gaojianli, who has 190,000 followers on the video streaming site Bilibili, used Fahuobang to track the movements of one of the trucks involved.

The site’s suspension generated further public suspicion as discussions started trending on social media platform Weibo.

Hu Xijin, an outspoken commentator and former editor-in-chief of the nationalist newspaper Global Times, wrote on Weibo: “If the feature was removed due to external demands and interventions, regardless of who made these demands and interventions, and regardless of their intentions, the actual effect is damaging trust in our society, and, ultimately, it is official credibility that will suffer the most.”

Gaojianli’s video showed that since March the vehicle in question had visited several provinces carrying cargoes that included chemical oils, vegetable oils and animal feed.

One of the routes shows that the vehicle collected a cargo of soybean oil from Sinograin’s subsidiary China Grain Reserves Oil and Fat (Tianjin) in the northern port city and delivered it to a food processing firm in Hanzhong, a city in the northwest province of Shaanxi.

The food processing firm Mianxian Xinli Oil Company said it was a “victim”, adding that the cargo in question had been sealed and stored on July 3 in the wake of an investigation by the local authorities.

A local vocational school confirmed that the company was a supplier and it is waiting for the results of the investigation, domestic media outlet Caixin reported.

Public records also show that the company had previously supplied a local university and public service providers for vulnerable groups.

Sinograin and the Hopefull Grain and Oil Group have not confirmed or denied the details of The Beijing News report but have said they are conducting their own investigations into the report.