Anybody ever heard about blacked out semi trucks that only run at night with no lights while traveling down the road at 100+ MPH?

Never heard of them.

This sounds like the usual conspiracy theory stuff. All I know is I’m an habitual night-owl, and frequently travel the highways at all hours, and have never seen one.

I heard it as Lamborghinis full of drugs from Mexico, but same concept.

Maybe ghost trucks, but no.

Never heard of this.

I have however, heard of a certain guy that my friend vaguely knows who wears class III night vision goggles and drives his souped up Lambo with its lights off at 200 mph at night.

No.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Wouldn’t the lights from incoming cars damage his eyes?

@bob_ I never said he was smart. Just rich.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Well, no, but wouldn’t the damage occur quickly? I don’t know much about night vision goggles.

Which brings us back to the question. If this were true, eventually one of the trucks would be in an accident, a big accident, which could not be covered up. Driving at night without lights is dangerous, so if nobody as heard of a handful accidents taking place, it’d seem highly unlikely that this is true.

@bob_ yeah, it would actually blind him. Night vision works by amplifying ambient light. His retinas would be fried.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Right. So, again, highly unlikely true.

And @funkdaddy, Lamborghinis full of drugs from Mexico? If the story has it that the Lamborghinis come from Mexico, too, I can tell you right now it’s false. There are only a handful of Lamborghinis in Mexico, and they would stand out a lot. If the drugs cross the border in a regular truck/van/car, why would they then change them onto Lamborghinis? The best way to hide something is to hide it in plain sight.

So, again going back to the question (* cough * General * cough *), if some organization wanted to transport something in secret, why would they used blacked out semis without lights? Why not simply put whatever it is they are transporting in regular semis that no one would bother to check? It doesn’t add up, fellas.

I’m not selling it as true, the opposite actually.

More like “everyone has a version of this, in my town it’s Lamborghinis from Mexico”...

The story goes the drugs cross the border by whatever means you like… tunnel, catapult, or mule and end up in Laredo on IH-35. From there it’s a straight shot wherever you want to go including Dallas which is a major shipping hub.

So you could load up your car, turn out the lights, set off at 150mph and hit Dallas in 3–4 hours. After the “hey, some guy got caught with a drug catapult” part turns out to be true, the fast car part doesn’t seem that crazy.

The story is popular enough for Snopes

I think it’s an exaggeration of what really does happen-and, at least in San Diego, it’s humans being smuggled, not drugs. It’s not uncommon for vans crammed full of people to be driven down the wrong side of the highway, lights off, to avoid checkpoints- and they do occasionally get into accidents.

Semi’s have gov-nahs on them right? Can they even go that fast? It would be hard to miss something that big hauling ass like that.

Truckers aren’t that stupid. It can be tough enough driving a semi for a living without pulling stunts like that. Where exactly do these phantom truckers do this sort of thing? I don’t think there are enough level, flat out straight-aways in the U.S. highway system to make that one much of a reality. Some truckers can’t even negotiate the PA Turnpike during broad daylight at a reasonable speed without crashing or jackknifing sometimes, let alone an of the mountainous stretches of highway. I’m with @augustlan, sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense to me. Or maybe this just happens when the are in the Nevada flats, in a hurry to deliver their cargo of captured aliens and alien spacecraft to Area 51.

I’ve also heard this urban legend. It was black sports cars with drugs going from FL to NY on I-95 similar to @funkdaddy‘s version. As others have pointed out, it’s a really stupid way to try to smuggle anything (even hypothetically) and I highly doubt there is any truth to any versions of the story.

Stupidest thing I ever heard of…Totally ludicrous. This holds about much merit as those black helicopters everyone talks about.

Indeed, it’s merely an urban legend.. For one, tractor trailers do not come cheap and driving it like a ten ton bullitt down the road at a hundred and plenty with the lights off just doesn’t sound profitable for any financier and getting anything ‘there’ by driving invisibly only draws more attention.

Light on or off, black or white. It does not matter. Unless they are shaped like a stealth bomber, are equipped with jamming equipment and coated with microwave absorbing material, police radar will pick them up. Ridiculous.

Well…. maybe not. I still think the USPS and FedEx overnight deliveries are amazing.

Wasn’t there a MythBusters about drug runners doing this at night?

@bob_ It would have to work the same way the military low light binoculars work. They don’t even take the covers off the lenses. Everyone was making fun of Bush when he was in Korea looking through the binoculars with the lens covers on.

If they are NVDs, the lens covers were there to protect the user and the binoculars from daylight. Same with Clinton doing the same thing. If Obama gets close enough to the front lines, we will probably see photos of him doing it too.