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Food

Stealing Beer Is (Literally) Not Worth the Trouble

Why do people keep pulling insane heists, like drilling through walls and stealing semi trucks, just to steal beer? It's cheap, readily available, and easy to make if you're really that broke.
Photo via Flickr user zionfiction

As one of humanity's oldest prepared indulgences, beer shouldn't be that hard to come by. It's cheap, easy to make, and readily available everywhere from gas stations to high-end restaurants. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find yourself anywhere in the Western world where a decently priced six-pack wasn't within a brisk walk's radius.

But that didn't stop a South Carolina man who recently bored through a brick wall, Shawshank Redemption-style, to reach a 12-pack of beer. After reaching his prize, he went back out the way he came in.

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All that work for a single, sloppy afternoon of piss-poor beer spins? If only he'd thought bigger. But he's not the only one who has thought that desperate times called for desperate measures.

After Germany won the World Cup this past summer, thieves in the town of Krefeld broke into a warehouse and stole ten truckloads of beer, amounting to 300,000 liters—or about 141,500 six-packs. The thieves, and their bounty, have yet to be found.

Earlier this year, a reported $80,000 of beer was pilfered from a Texas beverage distributor, Ben E. Keith, over the course of about three months. The type of beer wasn't specified in reports, but assuming a high average cost of $85 per keg, that's about 941 kegs.

In December, an assistant manager at a Florida Wal-Mart dove into the back of a pickup loaded with more than two-dozen cases of beer stolen from the store. As the truck reached speeds of up to 90 MPH, the Wal-Mart worker flagged down another driver who pointed a gun (Florida!) at the pickup driver, forcing him to slow down. The manager was later fired by Wal-Mart for violating company policy by attempting to stop the shoplifters. One cannot help but wonder who was taking a bigger risk for the love of beer—the truck-driving shoplifter or the Wal-Mart employee willing to pull a Speed-style stunt in order to get back what probably amounts to a couple hundred dollars worth of booze that could barely get a single fraternity brother drunk on a Thursday night.

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But nothing is quite as extreme as the most recent case of these flagrant demonstrations of thirstiness (not to be mistaken with thirst), which took place earlier this week, when a Florida man—always with the "Florida man"—made off with an entire semi-truck full of Miller High Life. Maybe they misunderstood the monetary value of the Champagne of beers, thinking it a luxurious sparkling elixir rather than a divey brew that you can typically pick up from the corner store for about a dollar a bottle.

On Monday, the truck was on its last stop on a delivery from Texas to Orlando, packed with 44,000 pounds of Miller's best, when the heist went down. The truck's driver, Van Thomas, was left in tears. What frat house were you headed off to, beer jerks? Do you see what you did to sweet Van?

Making off with what equates to roughly 9,700 four-packs of beer, it seems as though the criminals realized fairly quickly that A) beer is heavy, B) no one wants to buy second-hand beer off of you, and C) if they were planning on drinking all of the beers themselves, they would almost definitely be skunked by the time they were even in the 20th percentile of their haul. The truck and most of its cargo were found shortly thereafter in Miami, with little missing.

"Oh, my God," Van told WFTV, overtaken by sweet relief that his whip was not lost forever. "That's beautiful." He had purchased the semi only three weeks prior.

Shame on you, High Life fiends. May your lives be low.

It ain't worth the trouble for something that you're going to have to drink six of to even reach a meaningfully altered state of mind, and there's no fraternity party, band of town drunks, or high school keggers big enough for you to ever total your hoard or turn a worthwhile profit.

So cut it out with the beer heists. And while you're at it, get a job.