leaving scrap in your truckbed

I leave scrap in mine all the time, then again, I live in the country and it's pretty safe out here.

I live in the suburbs of Las Vegas and I never leave my truck out with scrap in it. Smart thieves will target upper middle class neighborhoods because they know people who live their have a false scene of security and don't usually take precautions to prevent theft. I have had my truck broken into once, luckily there was nothing in it at the time and also several of my neighbors houses have been broken into. The house right next to me almost had all the appliances stolen out of it, but I saw the guys and called the cops, the thieves sere smart and ditched everything and bailed but the family who was trying to sell the house had to pay a handyman to re install everything. If you have any vacant houses for sale in your neighborhood I would be careful thieves target these houses too for obvious reasons.

In my experience, I've found that people tend to not bother collections of iron as it's usually difficult to steal without noticing, and the returns for the risk aren't that great. That being said, I would not leave any metals with real value out and accessible. I'm talking about items like copper and catalytic converters, which are almost guaranteed to disappear, and also things like aluminum rims and batteries. I run a small metal recycling facility and have known many people personally who have had these types of items stolen from them. With metal prices up and the economy down, I hear more and more of these stories every day. To summarize: light iron/steel SHOULD be okay to leave on a pickup, anything more valuable be aware that you are taking a risk.

leaving non ferris metal open to the street is like leaving candy on the coffee table. the dogs will sooner or later get it. and may use your truck to haul it away.
times are not getting better, and desperate people do desperate things.

Only thing I will leave in my truck, under the carport is steel. Don't want to unload it just to have to put it all back in to take to the yard!

Originally Posted by Dru702

Unless their a tweaker, a tweaker will see a water heater or other big piece of metal as nothing more than their next fix. And it wouldn't be that difficult to steal he'd go get his tweaker friend pull his truck right up along side yours hop out grap as many big pieces of iron as they could and drive off. It would take less than 30 seconds. That being said I live in Vegas there are many tweakers here and this kind of stuff happens far to often. A couple months ago thieves stole over 3 TONS of rebarb and some copper from a highway construction site in less than a week. Last week my friend has some steel rims stolen out of his garage the thief probably only got 5 or 10 bucks for them but that's enough to buy a hit or two of meth.

I live in a more rural area, so there isn't as much of problem with that here. There are still some tweakers, though. Hell, last week someone got arrested for trying to steal a guard rail off the side of the road. I wasn't trying to say it wouldn't happen, I was just saying it was less likely than if he had the back of his truck full of copper.

I left my car in someones elses driveway, a block away, for a month & when I went to get it, the radiator was missing...

I'd looked under the bonnet before driving it home & thought to myself, 'Theres a lot of extra space under here, dunno why...'
It was when I stopped & noticed the wee drift of steam coming from under the hood that I relised something was wrong..

Another car in the area, that was just left in the corner of a vacant lot had its radiator stolen too.

Peeved me off a little, it was the 'start of the end' of that car for me, it sat for too long & got rusted out, then I scrapped it down & someone stole/took that hulk as well......

(They were supposed to give me & my other nonferrous scrapmetal a lift to the scrappers, but decided to just take the car without telling me.)
(I think they thought my nonferrous scrapmetal was stored in the car, it wasn't)
I don't 'deal' with Maoris in any way shape or form because of that, now.

Originally Posted by Err0rX

I live in a more rural area, so there isn't as much of problem with that here. There are still some tweakers, though. Hell, last week someone got arrested for trying to steal a guard rail off the side of the road. I wasn't trying to say it wouldn't happen, I was just saying it was less likely than if he had the back of his truck full of copper.

Yeah if you live out in the country you will probably be ok. Here in Vegas we have a whole population of tweakers who live underground. Then there's the naked city that's where people go to get ANY kind of drug.