$30K in Anti-Theft Mods? This Ram TRX Owner Made Sure His Truck Isn’t Going Anywhere

I’ve heard some pretty tall tales about how much car guys have spent on their prized possessions. Depending on the setting, I often don’t believe them. It’s nothing personal—I just have serious doubts when every upgrade has some dramatic backstory. If you’re telling me you have six figures worth of mods on your dyno-verified, 1,000-horsepower Chevy small-block… I tune out like an FM radio with bad reception.

The story is different with this fella Jay and his Ram TRX. Sure, he’s installed some go-fast parts and aesthetic add-ons, but what makes his truck more than your average desert runner is its comprehensive anti-theft setup. He told me over the phone that he has roughly $30,000 in extra security equipment for his Hellcat pickup, and y’know, I believe him.

Now, Jay might seem less like a lunatic when you learn that he co-hosted the Truck Show Podcast, and it turned into a running bit on the show. Companies tossed parts at him to test, and the result is arguably the most secure truck this side of Brinks.

It started just days after Jay had an IGLA immobilizer installed on his TRX. That’s a trick piece of kit that blocks signals from the truck’s CAN bus to kill the engine if the correct PIN code isn’t entered first using buttons on the steering wheel. According to him, he wasn’t even allowed to see where the installer placed the IGLA device as per the company’s policy.

The timing couldn’t have been better, because roughly a week later, someone tried taking his truck.

“It was a Saturday morning at 6 o’clock,” Jay recounted. “My wife goes out to walk the dog. I have a custom car cover that I put on my truck and her car, whatever. And she went out, saw that the car cover had been folded over like someone lifting up a dress, and my tailgate was facing the street. She thought that maybe the wind had blown it up, but wasn’t sure. Then she noticed that there was some glass on the tonneau cover. Uh-oh.”

From there, Jay walked out and looked in his neighbor’s yard, about 30 feet away. There his window lay, popped out with ease.

His experience here is sadly not unique. It’s a common tactic that thieves use to break into Ram pickups and drive away with them. “You can take a little hammer or a center punch. You use it on the back window, and the whole thing just shatters and falls apart. If the truck has window tint, you just push it through in one piece, and the [thieves] all slither through,” he explained.

Jay had heard about it before it happened to him, but he wasn’t aware of just how prevalent the issue was until his dealer said he’d be waiting 90 days for a replacement back glass. They wouldn’t confirm that theft was the reason why, but a short stroll around internet forums and owners’ groups reveals the common thread.

Finding the total number of TRX thefts would require a lot of info gathering from insurance companies, law enforcement agencies, and the like. And while it wouldn’t be accurate to say more of them are stolen than Ford F-150s or Chevy Silverados, the TRX was also produced in much lower volumes. When you consider that Ram made something like 15,000 TRXs each year from 2021 until its final run in 2024, where 4,000 Final Edition models were produced, the share of stolen trucks is enough to make you raise an eyebrow.

Jay postulates that it’s because thieves and chop shops want the Hellcat engine more than anything. “You never hear of a Ford [Raptor] swap,” he said, half-jokingly. He’s right in the sense that Dodge Charger Hellcats were the most stolen cars for several years running, as the Highway Loss Data Institute reported those muscle sedans were 61.28 times more likely to be yoinked than the average vehicle. We recently saw the Louisville PD crush a Dodge Durango Hellcat as many of its parts had been stolen from other cars, including the engine.

With all this in mind, Jay decided it was high time to install some more serious security upgrades. That’s when he acquired a Compustar alarm system with GPS and motion detection. It has a blinking light in the window, which ought to help discourage bad actors when they see it has an aftermarket alarm system. He then put 3M shatterproof window film over the top of his tint.

That still wasn’t enough, so Jay got in touch with Feniex Industries, a company that makes emergency lights and PA systems. Because the TRX’s factory alarm horn is fairly easy to disable by snipping a wire through the grille, he sprung for twin 100-watt police sirens that constantly blare the highway patrol “move over” noise until they’re disarmed. You can imagine how quickly that’ll make a thief scurry away (or how quickly it’ll make Jay cover his ears if he forgets to disable them before climbing into the truck).

As yet another layer of defense, in case somebody were smart enough to work around all these systems and attempt to quietly roll the truck down the street, Jay disabled the neutral override. Normally, this is controlled by a trigger inside the truck, so that owners can flat-tow their TRX behind an RV. Fortunately, Jay doesn’t have an RV.

While that mostly covers the modifications performed on the truck, I haven’t even told you about the infrared sensor that triggers an audible alert when someone walks in the driveway, or the bollards he installed. They’re four-inch, 316 stainless steel units buried 54 inches deep, so they’re plenty stout. Even when they’re in the upright position, there’s about one foot of bollard below the surface. They retract fairly easily, with one hand pulling up on the pole while the other turns the key so it can move freely.

“I’ve watched too many videos of guys driving the stolen car through a gate,” Jay told me. “I’ve watched them try to drive over walls before, and when I was told that these bollards will stop a 5,000-pound vehicle at 25 mph, I thought, ‘Well, they only have 18 inches, so they can’t get enough momentum to go 25 miles an hour.’ There’s only 18 inches between my bumper and the bollard.”

Jay paid $850 a piece for these one year ago, but now, they’re listed at $1,400 per on Ontario Bollards’ website. The installation costs $2,000 per bollard, meaning that if he were to do this job today, it would have run him $13,600. That’s a lot of money, no doubt about it, but it’s a heckuva lot cheaper than expanding the one-car garage on his 1950s home to fit the gargantuan TRX.

“If you looked at all the mods I’ve done to it, it’s $30,000 worth of work,” Jay explained. “And that’s not including the bollards.”

He’s clearly struck a chord with all this, as his original YouTube video about the bollard install garnered 69 million views. That’s crazy! And a year later, he posted an update video that has 8.5 million views and counting.

That ought to help cover at least some of the costs, right?

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