Diesel theft at the gas station

[Keith01]

Evening news last night had a security video of a low slung trailer being parked over the underground fuel tanks. Thieves opened a trapdoor in the floor of the trailer and siphoned out 1000 gallons of diesel.
Pretty clever.

Yahoo news reports today that they caught the crooks. A tip led them to a paving company where the truck and trailer were found. An empty 15' propane tank was found hidden behind a straw wall. The crooks used the engine vacuum to siphon the fuel up into it.

Detectives are investigating other similar thefts from the past few years.

I wish I'd thought of that, but then again, I'm too honest.

Keith in SC

[Diamondpilot]

That happens all the time around here. A year ago a guy fell asleep doing just that with a panel van and one of those 300 gallon polly tanks in the back. He was using a electric pump that ran on 12 volts. Well a police officer was doing his normal patrol and saw the road was wet in front of the station and smelled a strong odor of fuel. The guy was drunk passed out and the tank was overflowing. The van was still running and somehow he managed not to blow himself and 10 city blocks up.

He said he was doing it to support his drug habit. He had been selling the gas to friends for $1 per gallon.

Chris

[Skyco]

Keith 01- where was that in SC?
We've had al thousand or so gallons of diesel stolen the last year or two at my employer in Columbia from a very large generator tank. Sure like to catch them

[Skyco]

Never mind- found the info and it actually occured in Ohio.

I was disturbed to find a new trend is appearing here in SC and I imagine elsewhere- called tank tapping.
The thief punctures your fuel tank underneath and catches the fuel draining....that of course gets around locking gas caps and also allows him to remain more hidden under the vehicle. It is said to be happening mostly to trucks and SUVs since they are higher off the ground and easier to "tap".
So not only do they steal the precious fuel but ruin an expensive tank

[billbill1]

As long as there is something of value, the thieves will find a way to steal it. Fuel just happens to be the "in thing" right now.

[RollTideRam]

When I read the title to this thread, I was thinking the other way around. Like on Thursday when I had to get 26 gallons of diesel and it was $121. JC

[mjarrels]

On the flip side... three stations in the Seattle area were adding water to their gas.

mark

[Redbug]

It just makes sense when the price of fuel gets this high more siphoning would be going on. With a liquid, there's no way of tracing a sample, you just have to catch them at it.

Copper and brass has it's share of thieves, too. I have not heard anything about gold. It's at record highs, and I'll bet home burglaries are up but the police are not publicizing it...

[MikePA]

Originally Posted by Redbug

...I'll bet home burglaries are up but the police are not publicizing it...

Since these are public records, I'm not sure how they'd do this.

[Bird]

Originally Posted by mjarrels

On the flip side... three stations in the Seattle area were adding water to their gas.

mark

Surely they weren't adding water on purpose. Water in the fuel will cause vehicles enough of a problem quickly enough that they'd trace it back to the station it came from. My dad bought a Mobil service station in 1956, which of course, had two tanks; regular and ethyl gas. We didn't know how old the station was or how old the tanks were, but it wasn't long until we got a complaint and found that, sure enough, the old underground tanks had sprung leaks and had water seeping into them. Our liability insurance paid for all necessary service for anyone who had gotten water in their gas tank, and of course, we had new tanks installed.