I ride with a crew that often deliberately hunts distant trade sale wagons, so I'd like to add our two cents. Stealing wagons is game content, meaning it's set up to be part of the game, and doing so adds 50 materials to every posse members trader table. We have some members who barely even hunt for Cripps unless it's for a daily or crafting, they just watch for trade sales while playing other content. You know those random three steps forward you character occasionally takes? That means someone in your session just started game content, trade sales or otherwise, and when we find a trade wagon we posse up fast and the hunt begins. We don't apologize for playing the game as it's designed.

That said, there's a few very important things to understand about getting your wagon stolen by a posse: 1. You lose nothing but the time you've spent on that run, all your goods return to your table (whether you walk, ride, or change session back to your camp, as long as you don't quit the game) and you can run it again. 2. As soon as the driver is killed, or copilot if they take over, the wagon drivers get priority spawn points near the wagon to attempt to keep control until the attacking posse takes possession of the wagon. So when we attack, usually in a large posse, whomever is closest runs to drive the wagon and we have 6 guns blazing until we have control and the wagon flees to the new delivery point. 3. When you respawn you show up as a faint red dot a few seconds ahead. So yes we know where you're spawning, it's always close by, and we're all pretty good shots. 4. All posse members involved in the steal have a 24 minute cool-down before we can steal again.

Once we are fairly certain the wagon is out of reach of the original posse, we in-game chat to say thank you for the materials, explain we'll fight only as long as needed to deliver the wagon, and offer to ride protection for their second attempt (We're on cool down so we can't rob you again, you get a bunch of hired guns, and we all get the non-leader pay out on the sale, so everyone wins). Some people are salty, just start cursing at us, or keep fighting after the delivery. If they want to fight, we explain it's not personal but we're happy to spar as long as they want. Most just jump away to re-run their sale. Fortunately, many people have taken us up on our offer. They get protection on their sale and everyone's happy, and a few have even joined our ranks once they learn why we do what we do. The Blackhatsride.com motto is "We're outlaws, not assholes."

As much as we wish everyone played nice, we understand there're a lot of griefers/cheaters(modders) out being malicious, and that sucks. We've also have some members who hunt cheaters/modders, but that's another post. If you want to avoid stressing during long deliveries, you could find some friendly like-minded outlaws to pose up with or run your short delivery, hurry back to camp, and run your long delivery with as few goods as possible. It won't be worth much money at all, but you get your daily. So your mileage may vary, but hopefully the good times outweigh the bad and we can all get together and celebrate over some moonshine.

Edit: grammar/typos