- Ford F-Series trucks have been targeted in a massive Texas crime spree.
- Thieves have stolen truck taillights valued at over $92k from 34 victims.
- The fancy LED light units cost thousands and can be removed in seconds.
Criminals in Texas are making life a misery for Ford truck owners, but it’s not the trucks themselves that are going missing. No, they’re after something far less obvious but just as expensive: taillights. Over $92,000 worth of them, to be exact.
Related: Thieves Are Stealing Headlights Faster Than You Can Say Eye-Snatching
If that figure has you imagining every F-Series truck in the state has been left with a bare behind, you might be shocked to discover that only 34 pickups have been affected. But when replacing a set of lights can cost multiple thousands of dollars (obviously it depends on the model and the dealer, but we’ve read owners spending anywhere from $2,500 to over $6,000 to install a pair of taillights) it doesn’t take long for the total to add up.
Why Are Ford Taillights So Expensive?
The reason the taillights cost so much is that we’re talking about the LED units fitted to late 2010s and early 2020s Ford trucks. These aren’t your basic lights from the 90s; besides having EV technology inside them instead of boring old bulbs, the lights also contain sensors for the blind-spot monitoring system, which really adds to the expense.
The scale of the Texas theft spree reported by Fox26 caused it to hit the headlines, but people have been stealing these lights for years now, spurred on by their value and also how easy they are to swipe. Reddit contains multiple examples of 13th and 14th-generation F-150 and F-250 truck owners coming out to find their vehicles are minus a pair of lights.
Even if the truck is locked, thieves can easily drop the tailgate down to access the clusters by poking inside a small hole in the panel, and then it’s a simple matter of unscrewing the cluster and pulling it free.
It’s become such a problem in the F-Series community that there are several companies selling products they say prevent thieves accessing the lights. One is Latchlid, operated by Margot and Tim Mcguire, who decided enough was enough when the lights on their 2017 F-250 Platinum were stolen not once, but twice in the same year.
Their fix is a simple metal plate that fixes to the body and partially covers the latch mechanism on the tailgate when the lid is pushed closed. Thieves can’t drop the tailgate and so can’t access the screws holding the taillights in place.
Annoying and expensive as having your truck taillights stolen is, at least thieves don’t have to physically damage your pride and joy to do their thing. Which is more than can be said for Porsche Taycans that have had their front fenders hacked about with a saw to get their pricey headlights.
Well.. week one of the new truck. Tail lights stolen.
byu/Ilikefridges inf150