The Ford F-150 Raptor isn’t known for sipping gas but instead guzzling it like a drunken sailor, so this story of some Raptor thieves caught filling up at a station after the heist is just hilarious. One could even say there’s an ironic twist in there as the very nature of the pickups brought down those who were stealing them.
Stolen truck towing a boat flees from police in Houston.
It was the morning of July 17 when ten Raptors were swiped from a factory storage lot in Woodhaven, Michigan. With a price tag of about $100,000 each, that’s a cool $1 million stolen in just minutes.
The thieves seemed to enjoy using the rugged off-road capabilities of the pickups, knocking down a fence at the storage lot and trailblazing to a paved street and the promise of freedom. But that was short-lived for some of the thieves.
Michigan State Police found one Raptor just abandoned on the side of the road, the gas tank completely empty. We’re sure these criminals were pushing to the pedal to the metal and with how thirsty the trucks are at wide open throttle, the tank drains in a hurry. That combined with the fact little fuel is put into vehicles in storage lots makes for a bad combination.
Later in the day, four Raptors and four suspects were caught at a local gas station. We guess they had to fill up the tanks, perhaps hearing about what happened with the one pickup, and in that vulnerable position they were sitting ducks for cops.
In the Fox 2 Detroit coverage of this story, the reporter seems shocked to learn the keys to cars in factory storage lots are kept inside the vehicles. Considering in some lots there are thousands of rides, managing all those keys and figuring out which goes to which car would be a logistical nightmare, so we get why that’s done.
Still, it makes for easy pickings if thieves can get into the lot. They just have to be able to get back out, something automakers have been working to make more difficult for unauthorized individuals. At least in this case, the gas issue led to half of the Raptors being recovered.
Image via Fox 2 Detroit/YouTube
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