In one of its slogans, a beer company asks: “What’ll you have? Pabst Blue Ribbon!”
Someone this month took that invitation to extremes as the company reported the theft of 40,000 pounds of its beer from a distribution center in Montclair, Calif.
That could amount to roughly 50,000 stolen 12-ounce cans of beer, though the company did not specify the exact breakdown of the cargo.
“Approximately $25,000 worth of Anheuser-Busch/Pabst Blue Ribbon product was obtained after a purported subcontracting company submitted fraudulent documentation to arrange the pickup” late on the morning of Aug. 17, the Montclair Police Department said in a statement on Friday.
Four days later, Pabst decided to take matters into its own hands.
“Pabst is officially starting the clock now — you have exactly 18 days and 44 minutes to return our truck, no questions asked,” the company wrote on social media. “P.S., this is real and we are deadly serious.”
The significance, if any, of that deadline was not immediately known. A representative for the company could not be reached on Saturday.
The social media post featured a Pabst Blue Ribbon truck with the word “Stolen” stenciled in red atop the photo. A footnote at the bottom reads, “Photo not of actual truck…because we can’t find that one.”
Pabst wrote that it would offer a reward to anyone who provides information leading to the return of the product.
Also on Aug. 17, another shipment from the same distribution center operated by Anheuser-Busch was picked up for delivery but never arrived at its destination in Tucson, Ariz., the Montclair police said. That shipment was valued at about $45,000.
“Investigators identified similarities between the two incidents and are investigating whether they were committed as part of the same fraudulent cargo-theft operation,” the police said.
In a reply to Pabst’s social media post, the Montclair Police Department said: “We are working this case, but no trucks were stolen. Just the cargo.”
A representative from the department could not be reached on Saturday to clarify the comment or to reconcile the conflicting information provided by Pabst.
Montclair is about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. Last year, Pabst entered an agreement for Anheuser-Busch to become a brewing partner.
Industry analyses suggest that these types of thefts are becoming more common in California.
In the second quarter of 2026, the state had the highest risk of cargo theft in the nation, according to a report by Overhaul, a supply-chain monitoring group.
Across the United States, Overhaul recorded 605 instances of cargo theft in the second quarter, a 5 percent increase from the first four months of the year.
The group noted, though, that there was a decrease compared with the same time last year.
Despite the relative reduction, nationally “the number of reported cargo theft incidents remains among the highest levels recorded during the last decade,” Overhaul wrote.
Losses from cargo thefts nationwide totaled about $725 million last year, a 60 percent increase from 2024, according to CargoNet, a business focused on theft prevention and recovery for the insurance industry.
Only a fraction of cargo theft is reported, experts say.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau and the F.B.I. estimate the total annual cost to the U.S. economy to be in the tens of billions of dollars.
Stolen beverages and food are leading to an overall spike in cargo crimes, according to truckers, insurers and other experts, because those goods are easier to offload than electronics.
In June, about $500,000 worth of bourbon — nearly 11,000 bottles — was stolen from a Philadelphia warehouse. Officials described the incident as a “coordinated cargo theft operation carried out in broad daylight.”
In February, a man was arrested on federal charges that he was central to an organized cargo shipment scheme, which included the theft of frozen snow crab valued at about $325,000.
But not every company that has its cargo stolen jumps into action quite like Pabst.
On Friday, Pabst posted again to social media, linking to the Montclair Police Department statement.
“Clarification, Pabst does not own the truck,” the company wrote. “We do own the 40K pounds of beer, and would like to make sure it gets to the PBR patrons they were intended for.”
“Beer is getting warmer, trail is getting colder,” Pabst added in another post this week. “Clock’s still ticking.”
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