Owners of two Chevrolet pickup trucks finally set eyes on their orders two years after they were lost at sea in $14,000,000 recovery
Published on Mar 13, 2026 at 2:49 PM (UTC+4)
by Henry Kelsall
Last updated on Mar 13, 2026 at 3:10 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Mason Jones
The last thing the owners of two Chevrolet pickup trucks expected was to see them again after they had seemingly been lost at sea.
Yet that is what happened to two Australians, after the two pickups were lost in 2018, and it took two years for them to turn up again.
This is one of those stories that scarcely seems believable at first, yet it really did happen, although as you might expect, the two trucks were not exactly in ‘mint’ condition.
Nor was the recovery cheap, with the recovery operation costing up to 20 million Australian dollars.
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How the Chevrolet pickup trucks ended up at the bottom of the sea
The story of how these Chevrolet pickup trucks ended up in the ocean isn’t as simple as you’d think.
By that, we mean it isn’t simply because a cargo ship sank.
In 2018, more than 80 shipping containers fell off the cargo ship YN Efficiency in rough seas off the New South Wales coast.
The ship was originally bound for Sydney.
For two years, the containers sat at the bottom of the ocean.
Some items that fell off the ship ended up on the coastline of Australia.
But in 2020, a project was launched to hoist up to 60 of the containers.
This is when the two pickup trucks were finally brought back to the surface.
Underwater robots and a special ship from Singapore were used to retrieve the containers.
This is what happened to the two Chevrolet vehicles
Sadly, the original owners of the two pickup trucks were never destined to drive them.
Two years underwater would have killed any chance they had of getting them as promised.
As reported by ABC News Australia, the container they were in was sealed off.
After this, it was sent to the scrapman for the trucks to be destroyed.
Visible signs of their life underwater were visible all over the two Chevrolet pickup trucks.
Of course, this isn’t the only instance of cars being lost at sea.
The Felicity Ace might be the most famous after nearly 4,000 VW Group cars sank in the Atlantic.
Like with these pickups, their owners never got to drive those cars either.
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Henry joined the Supercar Blondie team in February 2025, and since then has covered a wide array of topics ranging from EVs, American barn finds, and the odd Cold War jet. He’s combined his passion for cars with his keen interest in motorsport and his side hustle as a volunteer steam locomotive fireman at a heritage steam railway.
