#589: Fuelock

Now that fuel is at a ridiculous price, criminals need to be deterred from hijacking roadgoing tankers and stealing their contents.

Today’s invention is a simple mechanical keypad lock applied to the outlet valve of a tanker. This would be made extremely attack-resistant and the combination reset daily. Although few crooks would be daft enough to try using a flame cutter to remove it, even using a hammer and chisel might result in a spark and a truly massive explosion.

Filling stations would be replenished in a sequence that would be hard for a small team of external observers to detect. The combination required to open the lock on a particular day would be called, or texted, through to a particular filling station. Similarly, the address of the target station would be called to the tanker driver only after departure. This would make it futile to stop the truck and threaten the driver or to work out which station to visit and threaten the staff to revel the combination.