Some people think the cost of gasoline alone is robbery, but it is truly a crime if the gasoline you pay good money for is stolen from your gas tank. Now, with gas prices at a high level, the authorities across the country are reporting a rise in fuel thefts. In a warning issued to residents, the West Sacramento, Calif., police department attributed fuel theft to the increase in gasoline prices. One recent report from Atlanta centered on a man who was caught running a garden hose from his house to a nearby car he didn’t own.
“It’s not a shock that illegal siphoning is rising with the sharp increase in the price at the pump,” says Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, an independent website that monitors the fuel industry. “Criminals will do anything for money, and that includes trying to take liquid gold out of your gas tank.”
But thanks to new technology, the fuel thieves -- even the genius with the garden hose -- can be stopped in their tracks. For instance, Ford Motor Company offers its Easy Fuel Capless Fuel-filler, a convenient feature that doesn’t just make it easier to pump gas; it also makes it more difficult to get fuel out of the tank.
Ford’s Easy Fuel feature deters gas theft in two different ways. First, it uses a spring-loaded flapper door that is held closed by latches and can only be released by a standard-size fuel nozzle. This eliminates the need for a screw cap. When the proper nozzle is inserted into the filler neck of the system, the latches release, and the nozzle pushes the spring-loaded flapper door to the open position. When the nozzle is removed, the flapper door is automatically forced closed by the spring.
Easy Fuel also has a unique inhibitor to reduce improper refueling and siphoning. The inhibitor consists of a fuel-nozzle detector that guides the nozzle to the opening. If a nozzle or foreign tube of a different size -- a diesel nozzle or a plastic hose, for example -- is placed in the filler neck of a gasoline-powered vehicle, the latches will not release.
“Our first goal is to make the refueling process as easy and trouble-free for the customer as possible,” says Brian Aitken, supervisor of fuel systems at Ford. “But if it also slows down would-be thieves, Ford customers benefit that way as well.”
