Stolen Firewood

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zachhandler

New Member
Nov 23, 2009
22
Minnesota
Any of you ever get your firewood stolen? Somebody stole a pickup truck full of fresh split perfectly stacked white oak from behind my house in minneapolis. I guess maybe that's the price you pay for living in the city. The thing is that i have to work harder than most for my firewood. I don't have truck so I collect it in a homemade trailer that I tow behind my bicycle. Most of it I get from within a mile and a half from my house. But it's still hard work. Even the slightest uphill is a chore with 500 pounds of wood pulling you backwards. I'm not sure what I should do now. The neighbor says build a chainlink fence around it. That seems stupid. I was thinking of just wrapping it all in chicken wire to make it harder to get at. Any thoughts?
 

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Leave your wood in the round as in the left pic, and only the heartiest of souls will steal it.
 
That really S&^KS !! Probably stole it cause they are a lazy ass to do it themselves or to sell it for drugs ! there is no respect anymore !
 
I'd be stuffing firewood in the truck of the car or using the lawn tractor to tow that trailer before I even THOUGHT about pulling it with a bike. My legs would be screaming in a few hundred feet!
 
can you put a spot light with a motion detector if they are getting it at night ? that will give me a scare?
 
Is that stack on the inside of your yard or out in the alley? If it's in the alley you're just asking for trouble in hard times like these. Seasoned wood is like money in the bank and should be treated as such.
If it was in your yard and thieves had the time and the balls to do that I don't know how much you could do to stop them. I would start with a dog and some sensor lights or maybe a game camera so you could at least catch them afterwards. It was more then likely someone in your neighboirhood who has watched you scrounge it all. Good luck and on the next cold day look around to see who's burning wood and try to investigae.
 
Wrap it in wire fencing of some sort, then put up some dummy camera's with signs showing the area is under camera protection.
Make sure to report the theft to the local police.
 
yeah, I'd call the cops. I am sure nothing will happen to remedy the last theft, but if you keep losing wood you will have documented it with police. Eventually it could add up to a bunch of money and be considered more than a petty theft. I'd report full delivered price for seasoned hardwood - $300 per cord I bet.

A fence or even chicken wire wrapped around the wood would help, but you might not stop a determined theif. Do you have a game camera and a place to mount it? make sure to position it so it has a chance to view the license plate on the truck if possible.

Oh, to answer your question, no I don't think I have ever lost any firewood, but it is pretty hard to get to my stacks. You'd have to drive through my yard past my house about 100 yards.
 
That really does suck! You have to do something to make it so difficult for somebody to take the wood that they don't bother. Or do the old M80 in the split trick and wait to see who's stove explodes.

I would like to see more pictures of your bicycle rig though.
 
That would certainly grind my a** too after all the work you put into it. Def get the motion light up and be ready to run out there although you may have some false alarms(cats, etc).

Never had mine stolen but much of it could be taken w/o me knowing it for a few days since it's seasoning several hundred yards away from the house. It's somehting that's always in the back of my mind, even more so with some of the activity we've had here latley with the gas drilling. If I see any missing I'll bust out the camo pup tent and spend a few nights out there with Mr Smith and Mr Wesson.
 
As was suggested earlier,a motion det. light. Also ,maybe a driveway alarm of some type might work for you.
At any rate, having someone steal from you is beyond disgusting .
 
scotvl said:
It was more then likely someone in your neighboirhood who has watched you scrounge it all

I'd bet on that as well. Who's got shifty eyes in your community?

That really sucks... may the guilty be found and punished.
 
Here is the trailer/bike set up. It carries more than my station wagon and if the thing collapses into splinters I really don't care. I would care if i wrecked the suspension on my car. The most expensive thing was the mountain bike wheels and those were $ 15 each. Recently the the boom connecting the trailer to the seat of the bike cracked so I wrapped it in fiber glass.
 

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Hook the trailer to the rear axle. . . less tendancy to do wheel-stands when taking off.

put some bacon grease on the wood . . . the dog will not let people steal that, and you can stroll the neighborhood to sniff for bacon to determine who is stealing your wood.

And then . . . go see the guy/gal you are getting the wood from. Tell him/her your situation. Bet he/she knows something.
 
gzecc said:
Wrap it in wire fencing of some sort, then put up some dummy camera's with signs showing the area is under camera protection.
Make sure to report the theft to the local police.

I thought of calling the cops. But then I remembered in the back of my mind that the city has a limit of 2 face cords of firewood per house. I probably have 5 full cords on my property right now. So I better keep my mouth shut. Then again, my neighborhood got hit with the minneapolis tornado this spring. Just about every mature tree in the neighborhood came down. So perhaps the city would cut me some slack for helping clean up the problem.
 
I also like the M80 idea, except I'd say buy like 2 dozen, and just mark which splits you put them in to warn yourself.

Metal or nylon strapping or banding would secure them to the pallets enough to slow down all but the most determined wood thief.
 
Buckthorn Burner said:
gzecc said:
Wrap it in wire fencing of some sort, then put up some dummy camera's with signs showing the area is under camera protection.
Make sure to report the theft to the local police.

I thought of calling the cops. But then I remembered in the back of my mind that the city has a limit of 2 face cords of firewood per house. I probably have 5 full cords on my property right now. So I better keep my mouth shut. Then again, my neighborhood got hit with the minneapolis tornado this spring. Just about every mature tree in the neighborhood came down. So perhaps the city would cut me some slack for helping clean up the problem.
Two face cords per house? Is this the Soviet Union? How unamerican.
 
You can get a half decent game camera today for about $100. I have a 5 year old one and I go through two sets of batteries per year for year round use. The new ones go through one set of batteries according to friends who bought them. Just make sure you test it out - a lot of them you need to be within 15-20' of the camera for it to take a picture. Also set the camera parallel to the route they would walk drive, not perpendicular. You want a picture of their face, not their side. Sets off the camera better too.

I wouldn't focus on prevention I'd focus on catching them.
 
I like the bike rig. You probably spent more on your bike than I did on my truck though. :)
 
Buckthorn Burner said:
Here is the trailer/bike set up. It carries more than my station wagon and if the thing collapses into splinters I really don't care. I would care if i wrecked the suspension on my car. The most expensive thing was the mountain bike wheels and those were $ 15 each. Recently the the boom connecting the trailer to the seat of the bike cracked so I wrapped it in fiber glass.

That's a cool setup. Tie that dog to the bike for extra HP!

How well does it stop? I would be terrified of riding that down a hill. Maybe you could rig up some trailer brakes...a cheap set of cantilevers on the trailer wheels and a strategically mounted handle on the bike might be cool to do. You could use the front brakes on the bike and the trailer brakes in place of the bike's rear brakes. Just thinkin out loud....
 
this is just lame. I don't have any advice. hope they make a second appearance and this time get caught, but maybe wait until they pull away from your woodstacks to make sure the po-po don't see your over-the-limit-stacks...
 
A relative of mine and his wife got their Minn. house robbed the first week they moved there from NYC.
 
Well, I agree that you do work much harder then most of us for your wood gathering. I hope the low life that took your wood chokes on the smoke. I would be curious to see more pictures of where the wood was located and how frequently traveled the road is? The person who stole it must have passed it more then a few times to conjure up a plan to steal it. Could be someone close by or that you know. Seems like someone would have seen or heard something (vehicle / person description). It would take awhile to load and theres no way to be quiet. I hope you have enough wood to get by with. If I was closer, I'd give you a load of mine. Is it possible the City hauled it off thinking it was yard or storm clean up?

I like your bike trailer. Near me, we have numerous bike trails that have scroungable wood after storms, but I can't take a vehicle down them. This is a bright solution, better than a wagon or wheelbarrel.

You could make an enclosure with Pallets (a pallet fence) and paint it to be pleasing to the neighbors. Wouldn't cost anything and it seems you're handy. Plus the pallets would conceal the wood where chainlink would still let the thief see it.
 
lame. i hate people that steal firewood of all things. my neighbor at my montain house was taking wood from me. long story, but he didnt know i knew, he thought i would just think it was the people who "rented" my house, using the fireplace. unknown to him was i never "renting". i lent to friends and told them where to take wood from.....and where not to. the pile they were told not to touch kept going down in size....hmmmm. Whenever i was splitting wood, i always kept saying to myself, one for me, one for him.......its a good thing he didnt know what seasoned wood is, so at least he wasnt taking the seasoned stuff. the worst part of the deal is, i would lend him anything in my arsonal....chain saw, wheel barrow, rake, ladder, etc.....and he would tell me how well he looked after my house while i wasnt there. he probably used my wheel barrow to cart my wood over to his house.
 
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