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Theft of truck, trailer and and 7 motorcycles...:-(
Theft of truck, trailer and and 7 motorcycles...:-(
Most bad things that happen in life are the result of a chain of events. Rarely is there a single cause. Rather, a series of occurrences lead to the bad outcome. If any of those events are interrupted, or changed, the bad thing can be avoided. The same is also true for good things that happen of course. The moto trips that I have been running out west since 2007 have generally always been on the good end of the spectrum with few bad outcomes and only minor ones at that. What I will describe below is a quite fantastic blend of good and bad things that happened to me over the last four days. I will forgive the reader for thinking this is work of unrealistic fiction. To be honest, if it didn’t happen to me, I would not believe any of this myself. I still can’t believe it happened to me. But some background first.
As I said I have been running these trips since 2007. I haul a rig with anywhere from 8 to 18 motorcycles depending on the type of event and location. I do all the logistics. The guys fly in and we have a great ride. For a long time it was mainly off road riding, but in the last two years we have added large street bikes to the trips. It’s a lot of fun for me and my friends. I have over the years developed a way of dealing with everything to minimize the risks. I keep up on the maintenance on the truck and trailers. Driving across the country alone I don’t speed with the trailer and I don’t drive at night. I’m very careful to avoid accidents. If I get sleepy I pull over and take a nap in a rest area. The truck camper allows me to sleep in the rig at night. I take three days to drive from my house to Denver typically, and I plan 4 days for the trip in case I have any problems so I have an extra day to deal with everything. I’ve had flats on the trailer and a couple of times the AC went out on my ’03 F250 diesel truck, but mostly it’s always been fine.
In 2020 during we did a street bike ride that involved me driving the rig to a hotel outside the Denver Airport. Everyone would fly in and we did a 10 day ride in Colorado. We left my truck with a camper and the trailer at the hotel during the ride. On the last day we ended up back at the starting location. After loading up the trailer everyone flew home and I drive the rig back with all the motorcycles. It worked great. The hotel was an awesome location and we had a great time. The route for that event can be viewed here. www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1_Fa-h7-L-Bd7_W9vhQqrnmWk2lmeNlmq&usp=sharing
This street bike trip for 2021 was planned to be very different. I had loaded in the trailer 6 larger touring bikes. Goldwing, K1600, GS’s etc. The event required me dropping off a 5 of the motorcycle at the same hotel as last year. Then I would drive my rig to a friend’s house in Idaho where I would unload my motorcycle and ride back down to Vail. We would all met to go to a friend’s wedding, then embark on a extended ride up thru Glacier National Park ending at my friend’s house in Idaho where we would load the trailer, everyone would fly home from Idaho Falls. I would then drive the rig home. The idea was to avoid the group having to return to the starting location and allow us to get all the way to Glacier from Denver without having to do 500 mile days. The exact route as planned is here: www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1kHgUHaxKLFCdg36o70VTqdZMb2WKbuTz&usp=sharing
In addition to the bikes I also was transporting a bunch of stuff for my friend’s house in Idaho where he and his wife plan to retire. So rather than me departing from my house to drive the first stage to Denver, I departed from his house in Frederick. This is an important point as you will see in a bit. So I picked up his stuff and another motorcycle I didn’t know I was going to be transporting to Denver until the last minute. The guy in Idaho (Ray) had just bought a bike for his eldest son who lives in Tucson and he was going to ride it from Denver down to AZ for him. We ended up putting that bike in the bed of the truck. All totaled I had 7 large street bikes and a bunch of boxes, propane grill, ski’s and a bunch of misc stuff. The trailer was packed not super tight, but as tight as one would want. Ray was going to fly out to Denver meeting me when I got out there so he would work two days.
I had just had the truck serviced and it was running great. The AC was working in grand fashion, the 4 new shocks tamed rough ride from the 50 psi of load leveling air bag pressure, and the alignment had the steering tracking wonderfully. The miles were flashing by and I exceeded my normal waypoint, just west of Indianapolis by several hours. Feeling good with plenty of daylight I decided to press on to Springfield IL which I made before dark. The hour or so further west starting point coupled with the upcoming summer solstice meant I had lots of daylight and was able to do the distance. I awoke early on Friday the 18th and again got an early start. The miles zipped by and I was making great time. Going east to west you gain two hours of daylight. The route I take has been crafted over years with little traffic. Towards the afternoon it became obvious to me I would be able to make Denver before dark. Ray was watching my progress online and texted me that if I did make it out Friday I could stay in his hotel room which was about a ¼ mile from the hotel we stay at last year and where I was planning on unloaded the bikes for the trip. Seemed like a great idea. It’s the only time I have ever made the trip in two days solo. Normally, as I said, I take three days to drive over a planned four days.
When I pulled into the hotel that Ray had booked, behind a Flying J struck stop, I was immediately surprise by the number of what appeared to be homeless people and people clearly living out of their cars were walking around. It was such a shock from last year that I texted my buddy near Denver that I thought the place was a dump. Lesson #1, stick with your intuition. If the place looks like a dump it probably is and you should GTFO… I had a bit of a struggle getting parked in the lot. But found a spot. I checked in after locking the rig up and bringing my bags in and promptly went to bed being exhausted from the drive. Ray was to land at 10:40 PM. We exchanged text message when he got in. The hotel shuttle got him in a little after 12:10 AM. When he came in the hotel he saw my rig in the parking lot fine.
That was the last time the rig was seen by one of us.
And it gets worse...
And it gets worse...
We woke up early to catch the breakfast at 6am when they started serving. But at 6am the breakfast wasn’t ready yet. The plan that morning was to unload Ray’s bike out of the back of the truck so he could head off to AZ, then the rest of the bike in the parking lot of the hotel where we stayed at last year. I would then head up to Idaho. So we were both thinking ahead of all the things we had to do.
We went out to check on the rig. It was gone. I was stunned. Full stop. Ray kept asking me if I parked it on the other side of the building, but obviously I knew exactly where we were parked. I realized I forgot to tell the desk person I had a truck and trailer when I checked in and I figured the vehicle must have been towed. I couldn’t believe it would have been stolen…. We went into the lobby to ask. They knew nothing of a vehicle being towed. We got the phone number of the contract towing company and when back out to the parking lot to see if we could see and broken glass or evidence of forced entry. We found none. So we went back up to the room and Ray called the towing company while I called the non-emergency police phone number. The menu system or the non-emergency phone system was difficult to navigate. At the same time my mind was racing of what I was going to do. I finally got an officer on the phone. The first thing he asked me was the license plate info for my trailer and truck. I realized I had no idea, the registrations are in the truck. I apologized and said I would call back. I called to MD and Tony was able to go over to my house and pull my titles from my file cab in my office. He found the titles for the truck and the trailer plus my motorcycle, took pictures of them, and sent them to me. Unfortunately I did not have the tag info for the trailer. Lesson #2, have complete vehicle info on your phone when you travel. I then called the PD back, second trip thru the phone menu system, and gave them the info I had. She gave me an incident number and said the officer would call me back. In the meantime Ray was able to confirm nothing was towed from the hotel that last night. At this point it was sinking in that the rig was stolen. We went down to get food when the power went out in the hotel. I had this constant low level adrenaline flow and my heart was pounding. I didn’t know then, but that condition would continue till the afternoon.
Finally the officer got back to me and I completed the report with the info I had and got a PD report number to give to everyone to call their insurance companies. We called my buddy Drew who lives about an hour away to come pick up at the hotel since the officer said nobody would be coming over to the hotel to investigate the theft. We found out the hotel did not have security cameras on the exterior. They are supposed to get them in a couple of weeks. I was running thru old e-mails and pictures trying to find my trailer tag info. By this point we had come to the conclusion the truck, trailer and all the motorcycles were gone. Ray called his wife to book him a flight home from Denver. We dropped him off at DIA on the way up to Drew’s house. I had not seen Drew since last August and asked him a bunch of questions about his new job, the wedding less than a week away, and how is family is doing and I cannot recall a single word of what he said, I just keep running thru my mind how much this was going to screw up my friend’s lives and my life. I worked out in rough round numbers the replacement cost of everything that was take was about $175k. My truck was not insured for theft. It was almost 20 years old and I figured some years ago to drop the comprehensive as who would steal a 20 year old truck? More on this in a bit.
Drew filled me in about how the local area where we were is crazy on auto theft now in addition to a spike in crime starting with the recovery from the pandemic. Unbeknownst to me my particular year make and model of truck is targeted for a couple of reasons. The powertrain is desirable for parts. In particular the ECM is an indefinite backorder from the OEM. Worse yet, the design of the door locks is such that it is very very easy to open the locked doors. A matter of seconds if you know what to do. This makes the truck a target. I had no idea of any of this. Having out of state plates also makes the vehicle a target as the victim will not have a local support network. All and all I was probably spotted and followed in to the hotel parking lot.
I felt terrible about having to call my friend Drew to get me as he was in the middle of all the prep work for his wedding which was less than a week away. The last thing he needed to deal with was a buddy who was deer in the headlights blowing spit bubbles over a major theft. That weekend is future in-laws were over helping to prepare things for the wedding and I felt like I was being the bowling ball crashing into the pins of his organized weekend.
I got up to Drew’s house and was looking at several hours of talking to insurance companies, police and my friends. I was not a happy camper. Some of the guys on the e-mail listserv I maintain for the group we travel with suggested posting on social media about the theft so other users could keep an eye out. While I am not on any social media, I dutifully forwarded pictures of the rig that I took the day before the theft. The guys proceed to send them out on social media. Drew and his fiancée set me up in one of their home offices to start the reporting process. While I would have no coverage for the truck (about $15k in the current super heated used car market) and trailer (brand new a year ago $10k) my Goldwing has comprehensive and I would be able to file a homeowner’s claim for all my personal effects in the truck and trailer. Then I would have to help all my less than expert friends with their claims as I used to work in the insurance biz and knew a lot about all this stuff. I was just starting to set up a legal pad to shift all my notes over from the scraps of paper I had taken notes on during the initial report of loss.
This is the picture that Dustin Sent Drew of the rig
Trailer attached to Drew's truck
View in trailer
Savation
Savation
Then one of the most amazing things ever happened. Lesson 3; have faith in people. Drew, who was in the garage getting ready to clean a motorcycle for the wedding (long story I won’t go into) got a message on his phone from a user on one of the Facebook groups he is a member of that he posted pictures of my rig with a “be on the look out for” subject. I believe the name of the group is “Rocky Mountain Diesel 4 Wheelers” or something like that. The person who messaged him, Dustin, ask if we had gotten the truck back because it was parked on the side of the road in his sub-division?? He sent a picture of my truck and trailer parked nonchalantly on the side of the road. It looked undamaged and Ray’s bike was still in the bed of the truck. Drew ran upstairs to show me the picture, his hands literally and visibly shaking, on his phone. I was stunned. I was my rig. I wanted to fall into the image on the screen of the phone and get my truck. I asked him where it was and Drew messaged the person and we got the address. I picked up my phone and dialed the police officer’s cell number that had taken the report. I got his voice mail and left him a frantic message about the truck being found. Dustin messaged what to do? I said call 911!!! And lay back till the cops show up in case the theft comes back to move the rig. Then my phone rang with a call back from the officer. He took the location info from me and told me to call the dispatch and request a uniformed officer to the location. He transferred me into the same non-emergency phone system I had already gotten lost in two times before. After about 5 minutes trying to get a human on the phone I decided Drew and I need to get in his truck and go to that location. I looked at my bag with my pistol in it, but my CCW is a non-resident Utah permit and not recognized by Colorado. Were I to carry it I would be breaking the law. Were I to use it to defend myself I would be the criminal. I decided to leave it in the bag. Drew and I hoped in the truck and started the hour a fifteen minute drive to the location. I kept at the phone menu system trying to get an officer dispatched before the thieves could move the rig. Drew was messaging Dustin who said that when he called 911 he was told it was not an emergency and then that the vehicle had not been reported as stolen. Dustin was going by the trailer tag, which I did know and couldn’t give to the police. I finally got the person on the phone, the one I first spoke with when I had no info on the vehicles. I’m sure the conversation that I needed a officer sent to a location that I found out about on Facebook via a picture went over well…J. I frantically told her the info and she said should would get officers dispatched. She told me she would and advise to keep my phone handy. We relayed this to Dustin and started to brainstorm what might happened. I texted Ray to tell him about he and he was 30 minutes from boarding a flight to go home. He asked me what he should do. I said I didn’t know what to tell him but we were on our way. We were obviously worried that the thief would show up and that could lead to a violent situation. I told Drew I left my pistol at his house. He has a CO CCW and had a 380. While this was somewhat reassuring I was not sanguine at the prospects of an encounter. I repeated a truck, trailer and a bunch of motorcycles was not worth intentionally getting into a deadly force situation. I told Drew if we saw the thief it would be a wave off and we would just follow from a distance and call 911. I also thought privately that Drew was to be married in less than a week and if I got him or I hurt, or worse, it would be the wrong outcome.
The problem is a recovered stolen vehicle in the over all scheme of things is not important. The police are dealing with life threating calls constantly. This was just property. We talked thru it and decided if the coast was clear we would inspect the truck and see how it goes. I had no problem calling 911 stating I was under deadly threat from a thief, but would see what was there. Drew remarked that choice was going to have to be made soon as we were 5 minutes out. That caused another instant shot of adrenaline. We rounded the turn to where it was at and the rig was there looking 100% fine. Diagonally across the street was Dustin in his truck with the motor running. At this point he had been sitting there watching the rig for over an hour. We every briefly inspected everything. I called 911 and to tell them that no longer was I talking about a picture of my rig from Facebook, but I was leaning against it. I expressed my concern that I thought I saw the thief armed and requested an officer be sent over. Drew and I looked in the cab to see if we could start the truck. The ignition lock had been popped. Turning the barrel the main bus powered up, but the engine would not crank over. The truck had already been disconnect from the trailer but had not moved. I figured the thief shut the engine off to disconnect the trailer and would not restart because the ignition lock was so damaged. Since the truck would not run we had already talked about this and the plan was to connect the trailer to Drew’s work truck and haul it out of there. We would pull the batteries and ECM from my truck so it would not run. I would follow riding Ray’s bike. From a safe distance I would call to get the truck towed to a repair shop. Or this was the plan anyway. We used tow straps to pull my disabled truck out of the way so we could connect the trailer to Drew’s truck. I then cut away Ray’s bike out of the bed of my truck while Drew hitched the trailer to his truck. We pulled the batteries. The ECM connectors were very brittle and hard to move so I decided not to pull them. I went back to get the key for Ray’s bike which I thought was in the bag I had with all the other keys. It wasn’t there. Earlier in the AM it fell out and Ray and I saw it and he took it thinking there was no need for me to keep it since the bike was gone. Thus I couldn’t ride the bike. We still did not have any police there and I was very concerned the thief would show up leading to an encounter. I decided to leave Ray’s bike and we could come back for it as it could not fit in Drew’s truck nor the trailer which was packed. Dustin suggested we move it to in front of the apartment unit he was staying in to at least get it off the street. I pushed it over there. Dustin was amazing. He sat in his truck watching the rig for over an hour until we could get down there, then another 30 minutes while we secured the truck, unloaded Ray’s bike and got the trailer hooked up. This was a risk to him if the thief showed up and a confrontation ensured. I gave Dustin $200 for his time. He tried to refuse it and I ended up stuffing the two $100 bills in his pocket despite protests. Once back in Drew truck with the trailer attached and under way Drew pulled out his pistol, cleared it, and put it back in his storage device. I was sure glad we were out of there with at least the trailer.
About that time my phone rang from police dispatch. I told them everything we did. They requested we stop so the officers could meet us. Dispatch then told me the officers pulled up just after we left and they now wanted us to return to the scene. We drove back to the truck and met the officers. I have never been so happy to see two police officers in my entire life!! We spent about an hour going thru everything with them and all the paperwork. It was very enlightening finding out from the officers about the high crime rate in the area. They said it was 1 in a thousand a recovery like we had. Ray caught an uber to the recovery location from DIA and showed up. He was able to show his registration and ID to the officers. The officers cleared us to take the trailer with us and asked about what I was going to do with the truck. I told them I was going to have it towed to the shop where a guy Drew knew was the service manager and knew a lot about this particular truck. I would find out until later that I had met the guy, Aaron Trail, two years ago in Silverton. The cop looked at me with a concerned look and asked how quickly I would be able to the tow lined up. I have AMA towing and have used them once before and it was a several hours long process. He said I would probably want to get it out of there ASAP. They had a tow company what was local that could be there quickly, so I had the officer request the tower. They got there in less than 15 min. They loaded up the truck on the flat bed while Ray got his riding gear on and we all did some pictures and exchanged into with the officers. After we confirmed Rays bike started Drew and I got in his truck and followed the tow driver over to the shop for Drew’s buddy. At the shop we were met by John who took in the vehicle and got the batteries out of Drew’s truck. Drew and I departed the shop to head to his house. On the drive back we were still processing all of what just happened and all the possible outcomes. We figures that the thief had drove the rig to the recovery location and was in the process of disconnecting the trailer to take the truck else where. I assumed the truck would re-start for them in the same way it wouldn’t for me. So we figured they left it to come back later. More on this later.
Once we got up to Drew’s house around 2pm I met Diedra’s parents for the first time and apologized for ruining their Saturday prep day for the wedding. They were all very good natured about it but I still feel mortified that I soaked up all Drew’s time. They had been waiting for us to go for beers and lunch. Drew had some locks to put on the trailer to replace the ones that had been cut away. The bolt cutters the thief used was still in the bed of the truck and I still have them. At this point I had not ate any food nor drinking enough water. In the heat I had been sweating a fair amount at the recovery location. Plus I had not taken a shower that AM. So after cleaning up we headed out for some local breweries and then a dinner. Needless to say I was wound up like a clockspring. Going out for beers and dinner was what I need to unwind. I could feel the stress bleeding out of me finally. We had a great dinner and drinks afterwards. Diedra’s folks made me feel so welcome I really appreciate it. The day had been such a roller coaster and I went to bed early exhausted.
On Sunday after breakfast I unloaded the trailer and as far as we can tell nothing is missing. Obviously I cannot speak for the other guy’s personal effects, but it looked fine to me. There were motorcycle saddle bags with very expensive items in them that appear to not have been touched. Initially I thought my dress shoes for the wedding were stolen along with a folding knife in the dash and a few hand tools from my tool roll, but I later found the shoes in another bag. I’ll reserve judgement for when the guys get a chance to inspect their stuff, but it looked like the trailer was untouched.
Later Sunday Drew got a text message from Aaron that he had the truck running. Turns out the reason why it would not run was the specific relay had been pulled out of the fuse panel. Without it the engine would not turn over, but the main bus would power on. Aaron was able to put in one and the truck fired right up. When he and Drew were texting about the truck on Saturday he was one his way out to Buena Vista for camping for father’s day. He was out of cell range for most of the day. Driving home Sunday he got the messages and stopped at the shop to secure the truck and got it running and moved it into the shop. On his day off. He said everything looked good but wanted me to come drive the truck to see if I noticed anything wrong with it. I planned to come to his shop on Monday. He said the passenger side door lock was the point of entry. The truck has a poor design that allows the lock to be defeated very easily. He ordered the parts need to fix it and by the time I got to his shop on Monday he had it fixed. He told me that he thinks the thief pulled the relay so someone else couldn’t’ take the truck and was planning on coming back later to pick it up. He said when he owned a truck of the same vintage he used to pull the relays when he was parking it anywhere at risk. He and I discussed some further security precautions I can take for the truck. He discussed the ignition lock key issue. If I wanted to keep using the same key it would have to be rekeyed, else I would have two keys. He stated he talked to the locksmith that morning who was able to look at the key and give Aaron the pin combinations so it would match my original key. I mentioned I had to pick someone up at the airport on Thursday and if possible I would like to get the truck back then else it would have to wait till July 5th. Aaron, on Monday night, after work took the lock home and re-pinned it so the replacement unit would match my original keys. He did it on his kitchen table and texted me a picture of the finished work… I was totally blown away he looked after the truck on his day off on Sunday and was working on the lock at home at 7 o’clock at night. As it stands now on Tuesday morning the motorcycles are unloaded at Drew’s house
Getting the rig stolen was the worst thing that has happened to me in some time and yet here were so many people I didn’t know, or didn’t know that I already had met, that were just doing amazing things for me. Drew and Diedra’s family were so kind to make me ok about interrupting their wedding prep plans. I truly feel like I didn’t deserve all this kindness. Lesson number four, accept that it is ok to have people do nice things for you when it’s inconvenient for them. There are so many ways this could have been prevented. If I had not pushed to do the trip in two days. If I had gone with my intuition that the place Ray got was a dump. If I knew more about current theft popularity of 20 year old truck. But at the same time if I had stuck with our plan of leaving bikes at the hotel from last year I think they would have been stolen. I am not on Facebook, and anyone who knows me knows that I have a dim view of social media in general. But because of this Facebook group, and kind soul was alerted to my situation and was on the lookout. The crisis was adverted. It all worked out. I may have to join Facebook now, which saved me spending $100k in uninsured replacement costs.
We will be hosting Aaron (and hopefully Dustin as well) at the Breckenridge event in July. Aaron has a KTM500 and we really, really hope Dustin will come as well. I also want to thank the officers of the local Aurora PD. Officer V. Xiong for taking my report, Officer D. Martinez and J. Hoffmann for responding at the scene. We even took some selfies with them! They told me it was very unlikely the thief would ever be caught, but they did collect some evidence and I hope for the best!!
Edit 6/23/2021: This from Dustin below:
On Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 16:40 Dustin wrote:
Hey DPME Tours! I just finished reading your write up and I am still in awe! A little context, i rarely find myself on Facebook. Maybe once a month. And i rarely find myself in that part of town because I live almost an hour away. For some reason i volunteered to watch my cousins cat for the weekend, and since me and said cat don’t get along i found myself on Facebook. I am shocked by the coincidence of everything that happened that day, but i am certainly happy I could help! As for Breckenridge, that sounds like a blast! I do not have a dirtbike, and have only riden them a handful of times. But i am working on my schedule now to try and make it up there for a day or two. I hope your trip goes better than it started and I will let you know ASAP if I can make it!
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