Licensed officers on your warehouse yard for every hour the building sits closed. They log each parked trailer by seal number, pull every dock door, check the seals on every round and flag a problem while the trailer is still on your property.
What an overnight officer watches on your yard
An overnight warehouse post stations a licensed security officer on your yard from lockup to opening. That’s 14 hours at a single-shift building that closes at 5 p.m. and opens at 7, or 6 hours at a 2-shift operation that runs until midnight and opens at 6. The night centers on the yard: every parked trailer and its seal, every dock door, the fence. Every vehicle and person on site after close gets logged with the time.
These posts draw on Reliable Guard & Patrol Service’s 150 officers across Greater Houston, under license number B07315701 issued by Texas DPS. They’re one part of our warehouse security guard service in Houston. Daytime gate and release checks are a separate post, run by our logistics facility security guards.
The Close-to-Open Protocol
Every step runs off 1 document, the yard sheet. It opens at close, gets checked on every round and is reconciled before your doors open.
The yard sheet
At close, the officer and your shift lead build the yard sheet together. Every trailer on the property gets a line, yours or a carrier’s: trailer number, owner, seal number, door or row, and loaded or empty. Pickups booked for the night go on the sheet with their load numbers. Any dock door that won’t latch goes on the sheet too, and gets rechecked on every round.
The door pull
The officer pulls every dock door, roll-up, man door and gate, and marks each one on the yard sheet. Any door that gives gets a photo and a real-time report before the walk is done.
Seal rounds
The officer walks the rounds or drives them in a patrol vehicle, whichever your yard needs, on the schedule your post order sets. GPS checkpoints sit at each dock bank, trailer row, fence corner and roof ladder, and the scan log is yours to audit. Here’s how to check whether night rounds happened.
On each round, the officer checks every parked trailer against the yard sheet: same row, same seal number. A cut or swapped seal shows up while the trailer is still in your yard. Found at a customer’s dock days later, it’s a claim.
Each seal check uses the View, Verify, Twist, Tug method from U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s seal procedures. The officer looks over the seal and the door hardware, matches the number to the yard sheet, twists the seal to make sure it won’t unscrew and tugs it to make sure it holds.
After-hours arrivals
Any vehicle that rolls in after close gets logged with its plate, a description and the time. A driver here for a pickup gives the load number, and the officer matches it to the yard sheet. No match, no trailer, until your night contact confirms the load.
The pre-open count
Before your doors open, the officer reconciles the yard sheet trailer by trailer: same trailers, same rows, same seal numbers as at close, or a note on what changed and when. Your shipping office has the reconciled sheet before the first truck backs in.
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What the freight on your racks changes
The freight in your racks and trailers decides how the night is built. In Q2 2026, copper stayed the most targeted metal, and organized groups kept going after enterprise-grade computer and networking equipment and cryptocurrency mining hardware, according to Verisk CargoNet. Metal thefts in CargoNet’s U.S. and Canadian data rose from 54 events in Q2 2025 to 80 in Q2 2026. “The groups driving the largest losses are not necessarily trying to steal more freight; they are trying to identify the right shipment,” said Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at Verisk CargoNet.
If your racks or parked trailers hold that freight, build the night around it: more seal rounds on the trailer rows, a patrol vehicle on a large yard so the officer reaches the far fence fast, and an armed security officer on the nights those loads sit in the yard.
The yard is where a loss is still recoverable. In the October 2025 cargo theft report from the American Transportation Research Institute, 73.5% of the motor carriers that had cargo stolen said none of it was recovered.
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01. Fully Licensed to Carry in the State of Texas
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04. Experienced in High-Risk Property Protection
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06. Corporate, Construction, Retail, and Event Coverage
07. 24/7 Coverage Including Holidays
Houston's warehouse yards keep growing
Houston keeps adding yard to watch. The industrial market absorbed 18.06 million sq ft in the first 3 quarters of 2026, already past the 13.56 million sq ft absorbed in all of 2025, per CBRE. Another 18.37 million sq ft was under construction at the end of Q3, led by the North (4.22 million), Northwest (3.58 million) and Southwest (3.49 million) submarkets. Port Houston handled a record 4,303,345 TEUs in 2025. More buildings and more containers mean more loaded trailers parked overnight.
Thieves work the corridors that feed those yards. In Sealy, on I-10 west of Katy, police opened a cargo theft case after about 32,000 pounds of metal worth about $272,000 was stolen. On July 23, 2026, officers stopped 2 men as they left a business on the Northwest I-10 Frontage Road with stolen cargo, and tied them to a similar theft from the same business earlier that month. Automated license plate recognition helped. Both were charged with theft of cargo valued at $200,000 or more, a first-degree felony in Texas (Penal Code 31.18), KWHI reported.
We post overnight officers along the freight corridors of Greater Houston: north on I-45 to Spring, The Woodlands and Conroe, northeast on I-69 to Humble, west on I-10 through the Energy Corridor to Katy, southwest on I-69 to Sugar Land and south on SH 288 to Pearland.
Who stands behind the officer
The company’s Texas DPS license dates to 2018. Its leadership has worked in private security for 20 years. General liability, workers’ comp and commercial auto cover every post. Ask for a certificate of insurance and it arrives that day. If your night drivers or cleaning crews speak Spanish, ask for a Spanish-speaking officer. Rates, and what a quote pays for, are on our security guard cost in Houston page.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens when a seal number doesn't match the yard sheet?
The officer photographs the seal and the trailer door and reports the mismatch to your night contact right away. That trailer gets checked on every round until your team clears it, and it tops the pre-open count.
Do officers check carrier trailers parked in our yard, or only ours?
Both. Every trailer parked on your property goes on the yard sheet, yours or a carrier’s, with its number and seal number, and each gets the same seal rounds.
What if our building shares a yard or fence line with other tenants?
The post order draws the boundary around your doors, your dock positions and the trailers on your yard sheet. Anything the officer sees past that line, like a cut in a shared fence or a stranger at a neighbor’s dock, gets logged and reported to your property manager.
Get a round plan for your yard
Send your dock-door count, the number of trailers that stay overnight, and your closing and opening times. We'll call you back the same day to work out the rate, the round plan and the start date.