Half-naked man secretly guzzles cargo of speeding wine tanker

You’re driving along the highway. It’s a hot day. You feel a raging thirst coming on. Then you realize you didn’t bring beverages and the next rest area isn’t for miles.

That common problem was ingeniously solved last week by a shirtless California gentleman who hit on a novel way of accessing refreshment in the midst of an arid transport route.

Gabriel Moreno was driving north on Highway 99 on Tuesday afternoon when he evidently began to feel dehydrated.

The 39-year-old Hayward resident pulled alongside a Cherokee Freight Lines truck that was hauling a tank of wine.

Catching the driver’s attention, he gestured “like something was wrong with the vehicle,” California Highway Patrol Officer Thomas Olsen told The Modesto Bee.

When the concerned trucker pulled over, Moreno stopped in front of him, jumped out wearing nothing but his underwear, and ran to the back of the trailer.

Realizing something was amiss, the trucker rejoined the traffic lane. But unbeknownst to him, Moreno had already jumped on the back and was hitching a ride.

The parched stowaway then unscrewed a valve on the moving truck and tried to gulp the wine as it gushed out of the tank.

A dashcam on the truck captured the moment Moreno first caused it to pull over and ran round the back. The vehicle’s side camera shows him jumping on before climbing underneath the now moving truck to access the tank’s valve.

The oblivious trucker pulled over again about a mile down the road only after noticing a dashboard gauge indicating that the tanker was losing weight.

As the vehicle stopped, Moreno “jumped down and placed himself beneath the belly of the truck and was just indulging in the wine,” Olsen said. “He was lying on the ground and doing snow angels, basically, as the wine was pouring down on him.”

The truck lost around 1,000 gallons of wine in total, according to Cherokee Freight Lines. So presumably not every last drop drained down Moreno’s gullet.

The now rumbled Moreno tried to run away. However, the trucker had already alerted the California Highway Patrol, and officers soon caught up with the sneaky wine-bibber.

A reportedly cooperative Moreno was booked into jail for felony vandalism and misdemeanor driving on a suspended license.

Although Moreno was released Wednesday thanks to a no-bail order introduced in California last month in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the story doesn’t end there.

He was re-arrested “moments” later for trying to steal a truck from a parking lot, according to the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office.

Remarkably, appetite was the driver once again, with Moreno “distressed by early release and … unhappy he didn’t get a sandwich” during his short detention, deputies said.

He tried to steal the truck to ensure “a return visit to jail, where he hoped to finally enjoy his sandwich.”

With auto theft also eligible for zero bail, Moreno was back out Thursday.

It’s not clear whether he ever got that much-needed sandwich to soak up the vino.