In Riverhead, New York an 18-ton excavator was stolen from a private property. This particular piece of equipment was worth $100,000 and when this article was written, the police did not have any leads. According to the article in Newsday, it was stolen between April 20 and May 5.
There are a few things to note about this scenario:
- The time period that this was stolen could not be narrowed down beyond those few weeks.
- A single piece of stolen equipment can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace.
- This excavator weighs 18-tons.
What does that tell us? Nothing is safe from theft, regardless of size.
Asset Theft Frequency
Surprisingly enough, it’s relatively common to have heavy construction equipment and assets stolen off of job sites. In fact, this Newsday article talks about this instance in Riverhead and mentions four other instances on Long Island.
If you aren’t already taking asset theft seriously, you should be.
The National Equipment Register claims that in 2016 approximately $300 million worth of heavy equipment was stolen. Of that number, only 21% was recovered. How is that possible?
Think about your own assets. How long does your equipment sit on a job site or in storage? When was the last time you checked on it? How secure are your assets?
In the construction industry, it is not uncommon to leave some equipment sitting for days, weeks, or months on one site, while you are working at another. The biggest issue is that construction equipment manufacturers rely on a one key fits all system. So if you own this type of equipment, someone with a key can easily drive off with your expensive assets.
If you don’t have a way to monitor your equipment, how do you know it isn’t being used without authorization or that it has not left that site?
According to an expert on heavy construction equipment theft prevention, the only way to protect your equipment is to use an asset tracking software.
Asset Theft Solutions
In the case of the missing 18-ton excavator from Riverhead, our guess is that it was not equipped with an asset tracking software. This type of software enables you to monitor your equipment use, location, and even recover the equipment in the event that it is stolen.
Need a solution to protect your construction assets? Let’s chat.
