Ice Pick Bandit rampage hits a Tennessee truck stop

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ice pick bandit
An image of the Ice Pick Bandit suspect released in Fall 2024 by Henderson County, Tennessee, police.

On the morning of Friday the 17th in Pleasant View, Tennessee, truck drivers at the truck stop off Exit 24 on I-24 woke up to an unwelcome surprise: The Ice Pick Bandit had struck at least eight trucks and dozens of tires. 

Jason Perhacs, president of 15-truck, Wisconsin-based Bristol Motor Transport, told Overdrive his driver called him around six in the morning saying he had six flat tires. 

"Because I'm an Overdrive newsletter subscriber, I knew exactly what it was," said Perhacs, referencing Overdrive's coverage of the Ice Pick Bandit attacks going back to 2023

"I called the repair people and asked, 'have you gotten any phone calls about flat tires?' said Perhacs. The repair service had not. "I said you're gonna need to take as many tires as you can on your service truck" and get over to the truck stop. Likely a wise move by Perhacs, as a previous Ice Pick Bandit attack on the 12th left drivers in Pinehurst, Georgia, about 400 miles south, stranded for extended periods as the volume of tires stabbed, perhaps as many as 1,000, caused a spot tire shortage in the area. 

Perhacs' driver reported the incident to the local police, who confirmed they took eight reports of truck vandalism on the morning of the 17th. Perhacs said his driver ultimately lost 16 of 18 tires, and the replacement job cost him around $7,000. 

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"Cops where everywhere" that morning, his driver said. "They hit almost every truck, but what was odd was the people that park there in day cabs, the local guys that park there, who literally pull their truck out and pull their personal vehicle in -- none of those guys got hit. It was very strange." 

Perhacs said he was reluctant to even report the attack to insurance, as it could drive rates up. "We run that area all the time," he said. "Now I'm afraid to run back through." With a $7,000 bill for the tires, "that truck has to run two months problem-free now" to make the money back.

This incident, and another in a parking lot in the aftermath of which the Bristol Motor Transport fleet received a fake Certificate of Insurance after getting their hood ripped off by a careless driver, is "making me want to get out" of the industry, said Perhacs.  

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If the Bandit has set out to remove some of the "excess capacity" keeping rates low, maybe he's moving the needle at this point, with a large volume and range of attacks seemingly specifically targeting over-the-road rigs, and no one else, 

Local police said they had reached out to Metro Nashville police as well as police in Memphis. Overdrive put the police in touch with Florida and Georgia authorities also looking into the bandit's attacks. During this latest string of vandalism, at least one driver reported a tire blowing out on the highway 300 miles away from the scene of the attack, underscoring the threat to public safety. 

In an unusual twist, Perhacs said that this time, his driver reported the bandit stabbed the tire tread, not the sidewall, as has been most commonly reported. His driver speculated whoever did the damage "had a handheld drill or a small little screwdriver," said Perhacs. 

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