Off Road Tacoma Broken Into

I haven't been here in a while but thought I'd come here to rant. Tonight I took my wife ice fishing for the last time we will be able to go in 2016 before season close. We went to a local lake 20mins from home and parked at a remote provincial park here in northern alberta. We were the only ones around, since it is a Tuesday afternoon. We only fished for 3 hours and were never farther than a half mile from the truck, but when we got back the rear sliding window was smashed.

We unlocked and opened the truck and it was ramsacked and pretty much emptied out. We've been compiling a list. I estimate we lost $5000 worth of recovery gear, tools, hunting and fishing equipment, electronics, not to mention my wifes purse with all of her IDs and cards including her birth certificate and firearms license. They even took her work clothes! To name some specifics I had amsteel blue winch extension rope, a bubba recovery bungee rope, high end air compressor, socket sets, torque wrench, breaker bar, various tools. Unfortunatley they also made off with our two cans of bear spray, and about $200 worth of ammunition left over from a trip to the range the other day. I'm not sure because I can't remember if it was unloaded or not earlier this week, but I think they also took a very expensive AR-500 steel plate target we use for long range shooting. They took a gps that I've had for almost 20 years that I've continued to use to hold certain waypoints and use for simple distance and bearing data. For some reason when they jumped in the box of the truck all they took was two gas cans, even though I had a ton of stuff strapped back there like I always do. My hi lift jack wasn't even tucked away where I usually keep it, it was just laying there in the bed because I'd used it earlier in the day, but they didn't touch it, instead they took the plastic base we use in the snow. I'm glad they didn't take the two 120mm smoke bomb cases that hold my spare axles, alternator, tools, etc. Some of the spare parts are hard to find at a decent price.

We are totally pissed that someone had the balls to sneak in and take all of this stuff right out from under our noses while we were relaxing on the lake within earshot of the truck. It's not like we have a big flashy truck, we use it hard and take it through hell and back every hunting season. I haven't even washed it since some time last summer. Around here in oil country there are a lot more attractive looking targets than what we roll in. We've left the truck for weeks on end in places far more remote than this with absolutely no problems. I'll be cruising the buy and sell websites and pawn shops for some time now. I want this stuff back, we're in major recession here and I can't afford to replace all that. We put our lives on the line relying on that equipment and we have been stranded without some things we needed before and had a lot of close calls in the past. Years worth of careful planning and preparation wasted on these POS excuses for human beings just so they can sell my shit to get wasted on meth. I just had to delete everything else I wrote after this. The road is pretty dark from here on out.

Anway that's it I'm out before I get into more trouble. Hahah. Anyone have any suggestions on preventing this type of BS in the future? I always thought hey I'll hear my truck alarm go off if somebody breaks in. Nope, it doesn't go off if they enter through the back window and unlock the door from inside.

I had already gutted the interior in the back of my access cab to fit all of our gear. Now I think I'm going to weld in a locking box to put all the valueables in. It would be safer in event of a rollover anyway and I've been meaning to address that issue as well. Also thinking of building a mini cage that coveres the rear window, extending up from rock sliders. Etc.

Thoughts and experiences are welcome here.

 

Nice write up. Sorry for your loses. Hope you get your stuff back. We can all learn something from this.

 

That sucks man... I had my car broken into once and my stereo literally ripped out of the dash. I was literally pissed about it for almost a decade. I had to drive through a whole winter with a missing rear window because I was young and poor ****ing thieves!

 

That sux man, i can feel the rage.

 

If you're thinking of future prevention once you get your gear built back up, I'm wondering if a back rack would work?

 

That will just make them break the left of right window. Not much you can do to stop a junike punk thief besides being right in visual sight of what they might want to steal.

 

Proximity sensing alarm + flame throwers under the doors.

I've had the same thing happen to me, so I understand the rage. There's a member designing and selling 2nd gen lockable underseat storage boxes. I would say look into that and a console vault to lock up the stuff you REALLY don't wanna lose, and then let insurance "secure" the rest of it.

 

Insurance should cover your losses. The only thing they wont be able to replace are the saved way points on your GPS

 

I keep a game camera in mine and if I am going to leave it remotely I put it up in a not too obvious place. It won't stop them but gives a better chance of getting stuff back. Placement for best odds to get a licence number is important. I use field scan mode taking groups of 3 pics every 5 mins plus the motion because it is unlikely the motion detector will pick them up.

 

For the most part auto insurance does not cover theft of personal property. He may have to go through his home owners insurance.

 

That's a heartsink when you first realize you've been ripped off and violated like that. I'm sorry for you and your wife. It can make you question your faith in mankind. While I was working in the back room on Monday, someone sneaked into my office and stole all the money in my cash drawer.

 

Thats a shame, may not be worth it then, I know my home insurance deductible is way more than my auto

 

Assuming he has proof it was not only in the vehicle but is now missing and worth the pricing he is ascribing to it.

Unfortunately OP: you might just be up a creek with no paddle. I wish you good luck getting things back together.

 

You know why I like Texas?
You can just go ahead and shoot people who are stealing your stuff.

 

Even the ones you don't see in the act?

Texas is a land of wormholes?

 

My insurance doesn't cover any of it except for the broken window minus deductable, and I don't have home owners or tenant insurance since we recently moved and was waiting till I switch companies to get tenants insurance.

The back rack idea really would be more of a pain for me to have than a deterent for theft when you think about it. The side windows are bigger and closer to the door unlock switchs anyway. Plus a back rack is a bad idea when you drive a vehicle on the ice since typically they fall in nose first if they go through and the front doors won't open, if you're going down nose first you want to be able to get out that rear window in case the side window motors quit before you get them open. I would have to build a full cage for the truck and engineer some kind of pivoting roof rack that would swing down from the roof and latch onto the rock sliders to seal in the sides of the vehicle. But then when they found they couldn't get inside the truck they'd have probably just burnt it with the 40L of gas I had in the back.

I haven't been using the truck off road much anymore since we've started using argos and atvs in hunting season. I might just buy a beater truck to pull my trailer and leave the real truck in the garage for trips that we need to leave the vehicle behind.

I do have trail cams and I do always leave one up pointed at the truck when I leave it and it works well to capture anyone that comes by. I like to use my climbing sticks to climb up the tree and mount it about 20 feet in the air, that way it's much harder to spot and nobody can reach it. Of course in this case we were only out for a quick fish in the afternoon and were in direct line of site to the truck so I didn't do that. We just couldn't see anything going on because the parking lot is treed. False sense of security. The theives had to have seen us out on the ice, we were right there. Big empty white frozen lake with two people standing there. In past years we would have just driven out on the ice but we had a warm year this year and I was sick of scaring the shit out of myself braking through frozen layers of melt water in the truck and dropping down 1 foot into the ice. So we started leaving the truck on shore.

Anyway will have to figure out a better system to lock up my stuff that's for sure. It's ironic that I kept so much stuff inside the cab thinking it was safe behind the tinted glass, and spent all my time worrying about the spare parts, tools, and gear in the box. But they didn't even bother with most of the stuff in the back. I suppose if I didn't have everything strapped down so well they'd have taken that too.

Bolt down everything you own people, cause humanity is fucked.

 

Very sorry to hear this has happened to you, Dave. Glad that you and your girl weren't hurt...ya don't soon get over a violent incident. Your things can be replaced...hopefully by insurance, though there's always the deductible to pay. Thanks for giving us all this reminder. A very good thing to do is to mark everything you have with your Social Insurance Number (SIN - not sure what Americans call it). It may not actually prevent the theft, but increases your chances of getting your valuables back later. And if someone is arrested with your marked gear the court can award restitution for the loss. Get hold of a metal marking tool and put your SIN on everything. Don't rely on serial numbers either; mark your electronics underside plastic with a soldering iron.

 

Last year the Jeep was broken into while camping on top of the Sandias. Parking area was right off the main road in plain sight. With the rear hatch always unlocked the thieves decided the best means of access was smashing the drivers window, rear passenger window, and rear glass. They were not all that skilled with a rock missing a few times and denting up the body panels. Some of the climbing gear was stolen, but covered under insurance. Insurance was ready to total the Jeep over the break-in, but when they saw the total replacement bill they reconsidered.

Sucks that people like this are out there. There is no means of really protecting yourself 100%. If you add in extra protection for some possessions they only destroy more in the process attempting to gain access.

Feel free to vent as that does help

 

damn i'm very sorry op. i would have judged the place safe as you have in your description as well. The only thing i can really say is don't let too many expensive items gather in a vehicle at once. Where i live i pretty much empty pricier items out of my truck whenever i get out of it. If the rare occasion i have to leave something in a vehicle( even to run into the store)i hide that shit under the seat. Even when i park in front of my own house my truck is empty.

I really don't under stand why people buy stuff for their rigs and leave it all bolted bolted up in plain sight all around the truck, they're straight up asking for it. "Damn look at all that stuff, wonder what hes got inside..."

 

I too feel your pain OP. I also think we all live in a society where there are lots of bad people that do bad things.

With my Tacoma nowhere is really safe from thieves: No locking glovebox and the factory tints back glass isn't dark enough to not see into.

I leave nothing in there except a blanket, spare eye & ear protection, and a chainsaw tool. I'm sure with the huge "prepper" crowd out there on TW somebody has had worse days than you, OP.