I was just reading a thread about people complaining about UHaul and rather than hijack the thread with this story I am posting it here
A couple of months after 9/11 I was driving a taxi at 3am one day and picked up four guys who worked for UHaul…they were all as drunk as anyone I have ever seen…not hapy drunks though scared…really really scared
They were talking among themselves and it came out they had spent the entire day with the FBI…it seems about 20 of their trucks had been stolen all on one day and in one area(this was in a town on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota)
Apparently whenever one of the drivers stopped to eat or go to the bathroom they would come out and the truck would be gone…these guys were the ones who drive empty trucks to whatever UHaul site that needs them…the FBI was concerned that they were going to be used for some terrorist activity
BTW Sure trucks disappear now and then like any other vehicle but not THAT many and not all in one area like this occasion(these guys would not of been freaking out like they were if this was a common thing)
The strange thing is I never then or since heard anything in the news about this…later I was reading an urban legend site online and this story(similar anyway) was in there…the people running the site said they investigated it and decided it was a myth
Except I spoke to those drivers…they were genuinely frightened…I believe those trucks were stolen like they said…I believe they were questioned by the FBI…what I do not understand is why it was kept quiet
If this was a case of a terrorist plot then presumably the FBI must of stopped it without incident and you would think the FBI would like getting kudos for it and if it was not then someone still stole those trucks…I checked everyday for months afterwards and there never appeared any story saying anything about those missing trucks
I don’t get it…what possible reason could they have for keeping this quiet? And are there are other things of this nature out there that we never hear about?
I’ve heard somewhere recently they discovered al Quaeda plans to simultaneously detonate a number of truck bombs near U.S. interests abroad, 17 or so, expecting the damage to be in multiples of what occurred at O.K. City.
Maybe this is part of the effort, maybe it’s just a gang of thieves. Like you though, I’m more than a little curious.
They each had to go to different addresses and the last guy I dropped off apparently was locked out from his friends house and I picked him up later to go to another friends house for the night so we talked about a half an hour…if they had been pulling my leg this would of been a perfect time to come clean
The trucks were not rented out and not returned…they were stolen outright
Lsura
I was referring to Snopes in my post…I even wrote in to them and told them this story too but I never heard back
This happened in the middle of November of that year after 9/11 not several days later(like in the Snopes story)…long enough so any pranksters would be trying something else anyway to fool people
I am not making this up and I do not believe THEY were making this up…whether this was terrorists or not I have no idea
According to those four guys those trucks were all stolen on ONE day(same area)…something so unusual they were questioned most of the day by the FBI
This was in La Crosse, WI a town where even a cat rescued from a tree gets at least a paragraph in the paper so why wasn’t there something about this in the papers?
UHaul trucks get stolen very frequently, as do Ryder and Hertz trucks. Sometimes as for cover for another crime, or as part of a criminal enterprise, sometimes not. It only took on sinister dimensions post-911, as did a lot of things.
FBI investigations are not a good indicator of possible threat. Right now, the FBI is even chasing down reports of “suspicious people” reading “subversive propaganda” that turn out to be book-store employees reading alternative newspapers. We’re still all on edge, even more so in the months after 911.
In short, I’m not losing any sleep over it. There were a lot of Al-Queda rumors around then.
Sure they get stolen anyway even without any possible terrorist connection
My point though the amount stolen and time from so small apparently was way beyond the normal rate for my area and even if there wasn’t some super secret plot to use them to hurt the US then why wasn’t anything in the news about it…even if just in my local paper?
I read the police section in the paper with all the police calls for every day(mostly because in that taxi job I ended up knowing many of the people involved)…they list every stolen car…every police call they made in the previous 24 hours and never was there ANYTHING printed even there
Add in the FBI and I find it VERY hard to believe the papers wouldn’t of printed SOMETHING about this
The way I see it there are two possibilities…either those guys were blowing smoke in a strange attempt to fool ME a random cabbie at 3am that day and there never was any stolen trucks…I just cannot get behind this though…I saw these guys and talked to them…they were scared
Or this happened just the way they said it did and for some reason the government asked the news media not to report this and they complied…the only reason I can see that they would is if the Feds invoked some national security issue
Presumably they stopped the papers from printing anything so there wouldn’t be panic or maybe to not alert whoever took the trucks the Feds were close on their heels
I am not some conspiracy nut trying to push some bizarre agenda…what I told you happened and I even this long afterwards am curious as hell about the back story
If someone has a different plausible theory I could buy I would be more than happy to put this out of my mind
Ok, other “plausible” theories:
[ul]
The theft made the paper but you missed it.
The theft missed the news deadline for the day you picked up these fares, and the next day’s news editor didn’t think it was worth a story.
The theft was a hazy mis-remembering of a story three drunks heard in a bar.
The theft was part of another “ordinary” criminal activity.
[/ul]
Most imporantly, La Crosse, WI would not be a major target for foreign terrorists. (Domestic wackos, maybe. There used to be a large freeman/“patriot” movement in the UP of Michigan) The Ryder van used in the 1st WTC attack was rented in NJ, so I doubt they’d go all the way to WI to steal U-Hauls for an attack somewhere else.
On preview, Jeff’s possibility is another good one.
I dunno – the story seems questionable to me. Seems to me that stealing 20 U-Hauls from the same area on the same day carries an unacceptable element of risk. You have to figure that after the third or fourth went walk-about, the police would be stopping every rent-a-truck on the road and asking for papers. Not to mention the improbable degree of coordination required to steal only unladen trucks and the luck not to be spotted doing so.
And in a relatively rural area, hiding 20 UHaul trucks would not be easy. Not to mention, 20 trucks seems like a pretty high number to be ferried about in a small town in November – not exactly prime moving season.
So…kind of hard to say what sort of hanky-panky was going on, but if I were an evil-doer, I wouldn’t be drawing attention to myself by driving around in a fleet of stolen trucks. I’d just rent them for $39.95 a day, decline the CDW, and drive off.
First I did NOT miss it…as part of our job during slow times we would have to deliver the paper to anyone who didn’t get theirs that day so every day we got several just in case when we began our shift…naturally we read them ourselves before we get the call to deliver them(practically ALL the drivers read the blotter section at the very least simply because we picked up and dropped off to many of those same places the police were called to MUCH of the time)…at that time I was working 7 day weeks because I needed the money…I did that for almost 4 straight months(just about killed me…every shift was 12 hours)
Second whether or not the editor thought it was a newsworthy story it still should of appeared in the police section of the paper…they list EVERY call the police went out on the day before no matter how insignificant
Third they of course could of been lying but those guys as part of their story said THEY worked at the U-Haul place themselves and THEY were questioned that day
Fourth even someone else or even many someone elses separately stole those trucks that weekend why wasn’t THAT in the paper?
I get there could be all kinds of reasons for those trucks getting stolen just then but what makes me the most curious is…if this was NOT some terrorist thing then why wasn’t there something in the news about it?
Also what is so unlikely about trying something in the midwest? They did the big city thing…wouldn’t the natural next step be to hit in a smaller less populated area the idea being to show us nowhere is safe?
Could be either the Feds got them or they like Finagle suggests they realised on their own their intiial plan wasn’t feasable and they abandoned it themselves
BTW I am sorry if I wasn’t clear…it wasn’t in one day it was over one weekend…I picked those guys up at 3am Monday morning…from what those guys said the trucks began disappearing late Friday to early Sunday
And La Crosse isn’t THAT small of a city(50 thousand) but spread way out along a river…lots of hiding places although if I were them I would of gotten as far away as I could before the alarm went out looking for the trucks
You know if only there HAD been some blurb in the police blotter section of the paper this wouldn’t be still bugging me
Now we’re getting into the weird conspiracy theory domain without any particular reason to do so. It may have not appeared in the paper because someone decided there was no sense in panicking people at the time. Or because it never happened. Or even because there was a non-newsworthy reason for what was happening – repo men taking back trucks from a failing franchise. If you don’t ask, you get to wonder for the rest of your life. If you do ask, maybe you find out. Your choice.