For the fifth
time in the 10 years that I’ve known him, my contractor-neighbor Jorge has had
another piece of equipment stolen. Unlike the past—when it’s been small and
lower-cost equipment including a compact loader, two pumps, and a generator—this
time it was a full-featured backhoe loader. Whereas, before, the thieves broke
into remote job sites, this time the backhoe loader and its trailer were taken
as a package right from Jorge’s equipment yard. Worse still, the suspect (as
political correctness requires the police to call these dirty rotten guilty
scumbags) was one of his supervisors, a highly valued employee who had proved
himself worthy of trust during the three years he had been with the firm.
There’s not a
lot of mystery about the theft. It happened on a late Friday night long after
work, when the suspect showed up at the yard with a stake-bed truck, unlocked
the gate with his key, disabled the BL’s anti-theft system, hooked up, and,
having the courtesy first to stop to relock the gate, gave a jaunty wave to the
video surveillance camera and drove off.
It wasn’t until
midmorning Monday that Jorge learned of the theft and the supervisor’s departure
for parts unknown. With a 60-hour delay in getting the word out, the cards for
apprehension and recovery were stacked solidly in the thief’s (oops, suspect’s)
favor.
As all of us
know, equipment theft is a huge and profitable business, and Jorge had enough
negative experience to establish what in most circumstances would be a more than
adequate anti-theft program. But as he learned, no program or system is perfect,
particularly in this economic climate where every employee, every piece of
equipment, and every dollar counts.
Like a lot of
us, Jorge is uncertain what the future holds for his small company that more
nearly resembles an extended family rather than what we think of as a hard-nosed
dirt-moving business. Beyond dealing a real setback to the operation, the theft
slices painfully into the fabric of the community he has nurtured for more than
a decade…and that’s not the end of the story.
Next Jorge has
to deal with his insurance company’s concern that his theft prevention program
may not have been adequate, and even when that situation gets ironed out, Jorge
understands that he (and you too if you care to think about it) is almost
certain to have to bid against someone whose costs reflect the use of stolen
equipment.
For more
details on the equipment theft situation, you might wish to view The
National Equipment Register’s
annual Equipment Theft Report, containing an array of statistics based upon its
database of over 90,000 losses, as well as data from the Insurance Services Office Inc.,
both of which illustrate the problem of equipment theft, and
solutions.