This summer a rare occurrence caught my attention. The police blotter for Strasbourg, Sask., announced the theft of a farm truck. It wasn’t the going-to-town on Saturday pickup truck. This was the real farm truck.
It was a red, 1994, Ford F-250. The daring thieves snatched their prize from a farmyard on a warm Friday night in the Rural Municipality of Touchwood. It wouldn’t start, at least for the thieves, so the enterprising criminals towed it away.
A lot of attention is put into the making of a good farm truck a farmer can park on Main Street with the keys in it.
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First of all, there’s the home-made security system, which usually involves a tricky, i.e. broken, secret door handle system.
A thief may be able to get around this by climbing in the passenger’s side.
If a thief manages to get it started, the getaway has to be made at no more than 75 km/h due to vibration concerns.
The round bale in the box is de-signed to block the ability of thieves to see if anybody is pursuing them, which works hand-in-hand with the cracked or missing rearview mirrors.
The stick-on convex mirrors attached to the bottoms of the outside mirrors give thieves the false sense of trouble being far away.
Meanwhile, the cracked windshield covered in bird droppings is designed to make any forward travel a high speed almost impossible.
Driving fast is rendered extra risky due to the large number of tools, hydraulic jacks and chains on the floor, as well as by the frayed, unsafe seatbelts.
Thieves will have other concerns as well, such as sitting on a large syringe left in the cab, or on the staple-pulling end of a fencing tool or inhaling the fumes and smoke that enter the cab through the holes in the floorboards and shifters.
As well, the thieves may have to contend with the dog that sleeps on the toolbox in the back. It might wake up and come through the sliding rear window hole.
In seems to me though, that in most farming communities, it is difficult to steal a farm truck. Everyone smiles and waves at every vehicle they pass on the roads. That makes it kind of hard to fly under the radar.
