Tag Archives: heavy construction equipment theft

How to protect your heavy equipment against theft

A construction business gives a lot of importance to its heavy equipment as they understand how crucial it is for the smooth running of the business and which is why they take every care to ensure that it works fine all the time. They take necessary steps to keep the equipment well maintained, service it at regular intervals and if they see a need to replace any of the faulty part with a new one, they do it immediately. But there is one particular thing which not all big construction businesses give due importance to and it is protecting their heavy equipment against theft.

There have been a lot of instances of theft in many parts of US and the number is simply rising. The cops are also having a hard time to get hold of the gang who is into this. So it becomes the responsibility of the owners to take utmost precaution of their equipment when it comes to theft. Please do not consider it to be a trivial matter. There is a parallel industry operating who are into selling stolen machines at a considerably cheaper rate. The modus operandi is fairly simple. They first lay their eyes on machines that are not sufficiently guarded. Once they have identified such equipment, they do a thorough study of the zone and chalk out a plan to get it out safely from the zone without letting anybody get a sniff of it.

Let us now talk about the solution. First and foremost once you buy heavy equipment, ensure that it is registered with National Equipment Register. They are the organization that preserves the databases of heavy equipment. So in case if your machine gets stolen, you can raise an alarm and let the cops know about it. The cops will then get the relevant information from the National Equipment Register’s office and will find it helpful to track down your machine.

It is also crucial to do a background verification of all your employees. It is not that your employees will steal the machine but they can turn out to be an accomplice. The gang ideally will first send one of its members to your company and will get employed as a laborer. But his main intention is to know how well you guard your equipment and will try to draw loopholes. Taking benefits of those loopholes they will hatch a plan and execute it before you even get to know anything about it. Therefore, doing stringent background verification is way too important.

You got to keep the jobsite well-lit at all times. Thieves can make good use of darkness and can steal away any heavy item. They are smart and therefore you got to be smarter. If possible, install heavy duty cams all around the jobsite whose visuals shall be monitored inside the security cabin so that they get to know who is doing what with the machine. Following these basic steps can help you in a big way to keep your heavy equipment safe.