As fuel prices rise, a new technique of gas theft is spreading
Tasi Malala was driving to breakfast with her girlfriend outside Scottsdale, Arizona, last month when she noticed her Toyota pickup was very low on gas and was rapidly descending. He approached a station and started filling out premiums. That’s when he noticed the leak.
“I looked under my truck and saw gas literally flowing under it,” Malala, 31, said. “It was flowing like crazy. I was going crazy.”
Turns out there’s a new popular way to steal gas: just poke a hole in it. All the thief needed was a few minutes alone with an electric drill and a gas can, maybe even a few milk jugs. Malala’s tank had a perfectly round hole and a repair bill of almost $3,000. His truck had been in the shop for about a week.
Such drill-and-dump thefts are becoming increasingly common as the war with Iran has sent gasoline prices to their highest level in four years and older, less destructive methods of stealing fuel have become harder to achieve.
In Los Angeles, where gas prices are among the highest in the country at about $6 per gallon, service consultant Lupes Armas said his repair shop repairs a punctured gas tank about once a week these days. It happened a few times a year at most.
“This is definitely a problem,” Armas said.
Insurers are also starting to see more damage claims; But reports are mostly anecdotal, according to the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, with only a few weeks left before the war begins and gasoline prices soar. It will take time to see how bad the situation gets.
“Let’s hope this is a short-lived event,” said Brett Odom, the insurance group’s vice president of policy.
Experts say repairs are covered by comprehensive auto policies.
Bob Passmore, vice president of personal lines for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said punctured gas tanks resemble the occasional wave of stolen catalytic converters, which can be removed from vehicles with a chainsaw and sold for the precious metals inside.
This is an expensive repair.
The shift to drilling holes in fuel tanks comes as the elimination of siphoning, an old method of stealing gas.
In the 1970s, the country’s chronic gas shortages led to an increase in the number of people dropping plastic pipes (or even garden hoses) into the gas tanks of parked cars to drain their fuel. The image of someone sucking on the tip of the tube to initiate suction (and spitting out gas once it reaches their lips) has become a pop culture trope.
This trick was annoying, but it didn’t cause any permanent damage.
Vehicle owners responded by purchasing locking gas caps and carefully monitoring their parked vehicles.
Malala said she would definitely prefer the thief who hit her truck to go the old way.
“I wish they had hosed him down too,” he said.
But today flushing is much more difficult than before.
Most newer vehicles have narrow, curved filler necks leading to the gas tank, making it difficult to force the tube in. Some vehicles also have internal flaps or baffles to prevent siphoning. Anti-pollution regulations mean fuel systems are often better insulated.
Gas theft of any kind tends to follow pump prices. Gas stations are reporting more drive-bys, but that too has become more difficult thanks to pre-paid pumps. Some people were caught throwing cylinders into underground storage tanks at service stations to steal gas. Others used electronic devices to trick pumps into dispensing fuel for a penny.
There have been sporadic reports of thieves drilling holes into the gas tanks of cars going back at least a decade.
But high gas prices are leading to more events, such as the national average price briefly reaching an all-time high of $5 per gallon in mid-2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now high gas prices are back with their consequences.
One morning this month, St. Catholic charity St. Louis Vincent de Paul’s employees noticed a dark stain on the ground next to the panel truck they were using as a mobile food warehouse.
Someone had cut a hole in the gas tank and drained the expensive diesel.
Michael Meehan, the charity’s chief executive, said they lost a full tank of petrol. And the damage meant they would be without a truck for a while. In the meantime, they needed to find a replacement part to use for the mobile food pantry.
Meehan said he sympathizes with the person who did this.
“This is another indication that times are tough for a lot of people,” he said.
But he wished they would choose a different path to get what they wanted.
“Siphoning it would probably save us some money,” he said.
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