Texas BBQ Owners Take Matters Into Own Hands to Recover Stolen 8,000-Pound Smokers

FORT WORTH, Texas — In the highly competitive world of Texas barbecue, a pitmaster's smokers are their livelihood. So when the owners of Panther City BBQ woke up on New Year's Day in 2024 to find their two custom Moberg smokers missing, they didn't just call the police — they launched their own search-and-recovery mission.

Co-owners Chris Magallanes and Ernest Morales were devastated to learn that their 8,000-pound trailer rig, containing state-of-the-art smoking equipment valued at approximately $30,000, had been stolen from outside their South Hulen Street restaurant. Surveillance footage revealed a white van cutting the trailer lock and hauling the heavy setup away under the cover of darkness.

Unbeknownst to the thieves, the owners had installed a discrete GPS tracking device on the trailer. Within hours, Magallanes and Morales tracked the signal to a vacant lot in Fort Worth, finding their prized smokers hidden under a tarp. They immediately notified the police and recovered their equipment before it could be dismantled or sold.

The incident took a controversial turn when the owners publicly accused a nearby business of operating a vehicle theft ring. They alleged that the white van caught on their cameras had been linked to multiple local commercial thefts, including a similar trailer theft in Arlington. The Fort Worth Police Department subsequently launched a formal investigation into the network, highlighting a growing trend of commercial equipment thefts targeting local businesses in North Texas.