Thieves

Yeah, last fall I had 2 pallets with some really nice hyd cylinders, 3-6" barrel & 3-4 1/2' long or so, along with several 1 1/2" -3&4" brass gate valves & ball valves....bunch of other goodies & treasure on these 2 pallets. Some of the cyl. needed repacking, but most were ready to work.

About 30-40'-50' away I also had couple piles of of junky, near useless landscape crossties, a stack of sheetmetal from one of my old shop buildings. Not much farther I had about 3 stacks of good scrap steel for welding etc....channel, angle, plate, bar & rods, I beam, etc.

I was there one day last fall & a sort of local guy I had seen around some, but didn't know, pulled in & asked about the crossties...mostly to keep them from being totally free, I made him a down & dirty price. He was happy. I told him I would have a loader up there in a day or so & help him load. Instead, he said he had a Bobcat with forks & a trailer....he would bring couple his guys & load them, then catch up with me to settle up....he knew me...I didn't quite know him......
everybody round here knows me😄 but they also know I been kinda slow-paced & not round as much as I once was too😞 😞

About late April I needed couple of those cylinders.....I went by there to poke round thru my cylinders......Guess what!!! No cylinders at all!! Pallets gone & everything that was on 'em.. Near washed out footprints, Bobcat tracks, truck & trailer tracks.

But I still have my landscape timbers!!!!!😄 😄

Everything else still there..........

Then yesterday was a different deal....& happiness returned somewhat....😄
They were gone about a month & turned out to be right where I stuck 'em so I wouldn't forget.😊 😊 But yesterday I finally found my 15" Crescent wrench, my 13# sledge that was my dad's, & my prize brass cheater pipe I've had for near 40 yr.....I'm really glad cause I been starting to having some really nasty thoughts, thoughts that I don't evenlike having, about couple guys I work with & around.

hi ttman4,
Yup, the "new" gold standard is copper, brass, aluminum (beer kegs!!), stainless and even iron. Thefts are rampant, irrigation pipe, valves,......steal the cable right out of the conduit.....even heard of case where building was occupied at the time😉
It's shotgun time.

Nation wide, it is. Was talking to the guy we buy hay from in BelleFourche, SD. The power company had a spool of copper taken right out of there yard. They cut the chainlink fence pulled the spool out and rewired the fence so it wasn't noticed for awhile. Around western SD the ranchers that have the old minute man missile silos on them that aren't used any more are digging up the cables that are about 3 inches across full of copper and making some good money. You're right OM time for the shotgun or we have highpowers out here. I have the sign: "This house gaurded 3 nights a week by shotgun, you guess which 3." John

We continually get our copper wires stolen from our irrigation pumps, it costs us about $5,000 - $8,000 to not just replace the wires but fix the distruction done to the electrical boxes, not to count the crop loss due to no water. The meth heads only get $100 - $300 per unit for all this distruction. And to top it off the judical system is just an oped door at this point. Our local power company won't let us lock and secure the conduit and boxes becouse they claim that it's not legal, I told them show me where it says that in the NEC, they replied with pulling the fuses on the transformer but when we had everything secure there was no problem (btw, the utility has a key to the service).


One of our landlords where we have the biggest problem collects three cylinder cats, he had about 10 radiators stolen from crawlers, trucks and a grader after we had the pumps secured.

During '60's my ag teacher in Tx told of some Tx rancher in middle of no-where that kept getting broke into. Laws weren't doing anything, so he rigged up boobytrap shotgun for burglar. Burglar got in, shot himself, & lost an arm in the deal. Burglar sued & won on grounds that "he was a burglar by trade, now he was maimed & had lost his livelihood & couldn't carry on his trade to support his family" At that time we had never heard of such silliness!!😞 😞

Last year we had a power surge, or drop, or power something one day....microwave was blinking that evening. We're on local CO-OP.
My big aircompessor (that used to have a 15 hp-3phase, but I had jury-rigged a 10 hp single-ph with smaller drive pulley) started sluggishly the next day....I fiddled with it off & on all day (Monday). Same thing Tue.
Finally motor quit. I hooked up meter to main breaker box at house & temporary box for shop (my shop that has no walls, doors, windows, floor, roof etc yet😞 😞 )
I kept getting 100volts,95 volts, 90volts...up-& down. I called CO-OP. & also wondered if I was getting stupid & wasn't reading correctly, or voltmeter was off.

Thursday they sent service man out. Also turned out the CO-OP had left everyone a recorded message that they were experiencing difficulty.

Turned out, the sub-station about a mile down road.....Monday morning the head man had come in, unlocked gates, gone in, flipped something on & KER-BOOM....local neighbor found him unconscious, boot blown off, holes blown in foot & leg. He pulled thru.
But during that weekend someone had cut fence & stolen allthe copper grounds wires & everything else they could get. Service man said it's wonder they hadn't got zapped stealing it.

At least, CO-OP bought me a new motor😄

Few year ago we went back to Tx for visit. Few days into this I was out messing round, got sick, went to hospital at Paris,Tx one night. Got there & there was cops, cops, & more cops everywhere.....turned into a really, really long night. Dr's & nurses were busy as hell all night patching up several (5) local upstanding😄 😄 electrocuted citizens, dealing with city, county, & state troopers, as well as 2 Tx Rangers....and about 50 local electric Co personal!!

For weeks some local meth heads had been out climbing poles on various abandoned lines round the countryside, cutting wires & stealing.....& no one could catch them. They would climb every-other pole, cut wires, then go to pole that wasn't cut & reach up as high as they could to cut wire....then haul-a**

It seems that this very night, these local upstanding meth-heads had climbed the wrong poles & got into some hot wires somehow. The 5 that got electrocuted got hauled to hospital by 4-5 more of their buddies. Their stories didn't add up, so Dr's called cops.....rest is history😄 😄 😄

Someone here on the board had a new Cat 22 core built awhile back. If you read this or have suggestions on who's done that kind of work before, I'd appreciate it. Probably not ready to have it done right away, but something I'll need to file away if the old core is too bad. It leaks like a sieve.....

The local power company has had huge problems with stolen pole grounds, substation grounds, even wire on reels loaded up from a substation in broad daylight. They've stolen air conditioners, and outside a/c units. One time they stole the aluminum guardrail off of a bridge.

Pretty sad. I'm not sure it was the junkers that did it; they left their name and phone number, just in case I changed my mind. But it's sure suspicious. I'm going to put in motion sensing cameras. Too late now, but for the next time. Three years ago, they borrowed my Miller Thunderbolt 225V welder, cutting torch & regulators, chain saw, and a ham radio. Never found any trace. I toured a lot of pawn shops looking for that stuff.