The attacks of the dreaded Ice Pick Bandit have reached a fever pitch, with at least three separate nights of truck vandalism already in 2025 causing blowouts and a shortage of truck tires as around 1,000 were reportedly destroyed.
Overdrive recently wrote about two attacks on Jan. 9, but has since heard of additional incidents on Jan. 2 at the TA in Wildwood, Florida, and Jan. 12 at the Gas and Go in Pinehurst, Georgia.
Sumter County, Florida police confirmed to Overdrive it had taken reports of truck tire vandalism at the TA at 6:30 in the morning on Jan. 2, but said it could not comment any further on an active investigation.
A representative of the Pinehurst Gas and Go said the bandit had been so bold as to attack the tires of a truck parked at the pump. The driver "came in to get something to eat" and when it came "time to pull out, the tires were flat," the representative said. This driver got stuck for four days, and "just got on the road yesterday" when a local shop could finally get him some tires.
"He had to get a whole order" of new tires, the rep said. "He had to call his company and do his insurance and then order new tires."
The Gas and Go staff did call the police, who took reports. "We have free parking, and we’re not responsible for trucks here. We tell everyone that in the back [of the lot] our cameras don’t reach way back. It's a big truck stop. We only can see up close and we didn't even see" the tires attacked while at the pump, the rep concluded.
Craig Hall, who works at the Mobile Truck and Tire Repair in Unadilla, Georgia, just about ground zero for Ice Pick Bandit attacks between Macon and Pinehurst, said that attack on the 12th led to 147 individual tires.
Overdrive has been tracking the mysterious incidents of truck vandalism since 2023, and while we've had reports from as far as Texas and Missouri, I-75 south of Atlanta and north of Gainesville, Florida, make up the hottest of hot spot for risk from Ice Pick Bandit attacks.
"It’s a working man trying to make a living in a time that’s very hard on truckers right now," Hall lamented. "There were truckers that sat there seven or eight days that couldn’t afford to put 17 or 18 tires on the truck."
Hall said many had to wait to order in more tires. "Not every trucker uses the same kind of tires, so it doesn’t matter what you have in the warehouse," he said about tire availability.
"It's not an act of terrorism, but almost the same thing," said Hall. Some of these tires were about brand-new, he added. "If they hadn’t have done this thing to it, they had about 60, 70,000 miles easily on the tires. ... It’s just sad."
Hall estimated that the bandit, or bandits, or whoever was doing this, likely got 1,000 tires in the last week alone between separate attacks he's heard of or attended to.
Hall advises all Ice Pick Bandit attack victims to file a police report.
Police in Dooly County, Georgia, where Pinehurst is located, said they'd reported the attacks to state authorities as well as the FBI.
Ralph Heirs, a company driver for Walmart based in Douglasville, Georgia, said he was at the Gas and Go on January 13 and witnessed the aftermath of one of the attacks. "I just happened to pull in there the next day and a guy said [the Ice Pick Bandit] had been to that truck stop and flattened 14 trucks' tires," said Heirs. "He had 17 out of 18 tires flattened."
Heirs runs up and down I-75 "all the time," but this was his first brush with the bandit, he said. "I actually think he’s going to wish the police catch him first, because if one of those owner-operators who is getting hit for $20,000 in tires catches him and is carrying a gun, he is liable to kill him."
Heirs said police told the attack victim they knew of attacks all up and down I-75, including a recent one in Lake City, Florida. Dooly County police mentioned attacks as far north as North Carolina.
Police reportedly told drivers in Pinehurst that they had pictures of the suspect and his truck, which may be the same Overdrive has reported on here. There's obviously immediate public danger from such a menace. One driver who got hit on Jan. 12 reported a blowout as a result. "My truck was hit," the driver wrote. "I had to replace eight tires on tractor and trailer" on January 10. The following Monday, he said he had a blowout on the passenger side, and "when I stopped, tires on both drive axles were almost on the ground. The tires are punctured in a way that it's hard to detect."
That driver said he'd gone 300 miles on the punctured tires before the blowout.
