Someone Steal Your U-Haul? These Bounty Hunters Will Get It Back

Moving Day is stressful at the best of times. Coordinating the last day in one apartment and the first in the next; gingerly packing sentimental objects; doing a final scrub before your old pad gets the “landlord special.” 

But what happens if you’ve packed all your cardboard boxes and appliances in a U-Haul and it gets hotwired? There goes a truck with your entire life. Then kicks off a surprisingly Wild West experience.

Police Report Required

The first thing that happens when you call U-Haul to report a missing truck is that they’ll ask if you’ve filed a police report. It’s required. Theoretically the local police will do their due diligence and track it down, but in The City it’s hard to get police to respond. 

Some might blame staffing, others might point out that taxpayers are gifting the San Francisco Police Department a jumbo check, higher than other police departments in comparable cities. Another factor is that some crimes require victims to march up to the cannon’s mouth, so to speak, and file a report in the precinct office. 

Regardless, once the report is filed, the true heroes can begin their task. U-Haul Equipment Recovery is a team of bounty hunters for stolen trucks, and the ones on hire for the Bay Area are quick at their work. 

Wouldn’t this all be a lot simpler if U-Haul installed GPS tracking? It’s common in modern vehicles. Victims of stalking know that these systems can be virtually undetectable and relatively cheap. If abusers do it, why doesn’t a massive corporation? The question is posed regularly in the Bay Area.

U-Haul’s Long, Storied Past

U-Haul has one of the best Wikipedia pages. It’s a story with a Nick Cannon-esque founder who sowed his seed widely and ended up with bickering children who fought at his company’s shareholder meetings. The company has gone through several publicity agonies, including when almost half of its Canadian fleet was found to be unfit for the road. 

Not attaching GPS to their aging fleet is probably small potatoes. U-Haul is too cheap to do much, so there’s a ripe industry of co-habitating bloodsuckers. They don’t even have franchises, just dealers. That’s where professional recovery units come in. These U-Haul bounty hunters know just where to look.

The Caper Couldn’t Have Gotten Far

Because the trucks are old and the roads rough, the chances are high that a stolen truck won’t get far. Once found, victims are notified and need to act quickly to examine the contents of the truck, which are often rifled through or broken. 

It’s not a passive job. They explain, “One of my guys, they’re always rolling around in a tow truck or the company truck to scope it out. They call each other. Everybody has a turn.”

So is there a pattern? Is it the same people? That part isn’t clear, but one thing V & U did explain was that vehicles stolen from everywhere else tend to end up in one place: Oakland. When asked if it’s organized, they said, “We don’t know, we can’t confirm that. But we’re located here in Oakland. They always get brought to Oakland. That’s why the City of Oakland has a bad rep. You can’t even have a nice little car with a couple presents in the trunk.”

More Than Trucks

The bounty hunters don’t just do U-Hauls. When we spoke to V & U, they told a funny story about a guy’s girlfriend who borrowed his 2023 Maserati to go out with a few friends. “Turns out she left him, ransacked his jewelry, took his car with the spare keys, and took it from Texas to Alameda. He gave us the address and had a GPS. The police couldn’t do anything about it because it was a civil matter. Obviously he wasn’t gonna get his car back. What we ended up doing was, he gave us the address, pictures, license plate, VIN, because we have to confirm.” They successfully recovered the car this time. 

When referring to a recent recovered truck, they said, “I wish we could have helped more.” That one was recovered but most of the valuables were torn up or gone. “Any time that you have any gifts or anything, or even luggage, don’t leave it out in the open where people can see it. Use your cover.” 

Other Tips

One user jokingly claims they avoided theft with: “tripwire activated claymores, sentinel turrets, orbital lasers borrowed from work, swept the area regularly with swarms of killer bees.” Some other tips that we can’t necessarily endorse:

• Don’t fill up the truck all the way
• Disable the fuse box
• Don’t leave the truck packed and unattended, not even for five minutes

Moving’s hard enough. The last thing you need is a new friend in the truck bounty hunter department, even if they are nice and professional.

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