Myrtle Beach Truck Week in South Carolina is always a party. I’d stop short of saying it’s a “good party” because every year the cops show up and write tickets left and right. That was undeniably the case with this year’s meetup last week, where the Myrtle Beach Police Department cracked down on dozens of squatted trucks across town with blinding underglow and train horns.
Videos of cop cars swarming different meets across Myrtle Beach hit social media over the weekend. TikTok posters shared clips of trucks cruising the boardwalk with their grilles pointed at the sky, only to later post updates that the show was shut down. The show was held after a bill banning squatted trucks in South Carolina passed through the state Senate on Feb. 15. Other states including North Carolina and Virginia have already made the mod illegal citing safety concerns.
Some videos showing people getting handcuffed say they were headed to jail for being “too squatted,” though that’s not entirely clear. Myrtle Beach Police Department confirmed to The Drive that because a final form of the bill has not been signed into law, squatted trucks are not yet illegal in South Carolina. Instead, any citations or arrests made were related to violations of other laws, like reckless driving or loitering.
Other car and truck shows across the states have been extinguished for the same sort of antics in recent years. H20i in Ocean City, Maryland, is one example that’s been informally dubbed “the most ticketed car meet in America.” Then there’s the Florida Truck Meet, which used to take place in Daytona Beach, but has been forced further south after city officials got fed up with what reportedly happened in South Carolina.
Indeed, Myrtle Beach Truck Week as it exists today isn’t the same as it once was. The event was actually called off in 2022 as show organizers said changes on the city’s side meant they could no longer host shows at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. What apparently happened, then, is an unofficial and largely unincorporated meet like what’s happened with H20i since that was formally shut down years ago.
Myrtle Beach Police Department hasn’t issued a public statement about what would happen to all the squatted trucks they reportedly impounded. Unfortunately for other gearheads, this get-together took place at the same time as the city’s 34th annual Run to the Sun car show. What could’ve been a good time with neat rides instead turned into traffic stop central with loud subwoofers rattling every window around.
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