The day after a daylight heist of an antique truck on Easter Sunday, a Truman Creek Road resident has recovered the vehicle. 

Craig Jore said he returned home from work Sunday to learn that a neighbor to his family’s property on Truman Creek Road had watched two men load the 1953 Chevrolet pickup onto a flatbed trailer and then drive away. The neighbor wondered if Jore had sold the truck, which he had not.

Jore later got word that the perpetrators had vehicle problems and were seen in the area towing not only the flatbed trailer, but a white pickup.

Jore said the incident was reported to the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office and his mother, Sandy Bradford, started calling around to junk yards to locate the old truck that belonged to Jore’s father.

“It was my father’s and it’s something that at some point I was going to do a restoration on,” he said. “It’s a special part of him, and he passed away about eight years ago.”

At about 9:30 a.m., the truck showed up at Pacific Recycling in Evergreen and the sheriff’s office responded.

“I did get it back, thanks to my mother calling around all the wrecking yards this morning alerting them to be on the lookout for it,” Jore said. “They tried to sell it for scrap at Pacific ... the sheriff’s office intervened and interviewed them and could make an arrest at this point because they claimed they had been given permission” to haul the truck away.

Jore suspects it was a former renter of a trailer on the property where the truck was parked who “gave permission” to haul it away. Jore said the man who showed up with the truck at Pacific claimed he paid $50 for the vehicle.

As of Monday, the theft was still under investigation, Sheriff Chuck Curry said. 

“It’s kind of unusual,” Curry said. “Stolen cars aren’t. Non-running stolen cars are.”