When it comes to protecting valuable construction equipment and
trucks, there are two basic approaches: prevention and recovery. The
former is the favorable strategy, since it significantly reduces
potential damage to the asset as well as eliminates the time and effort
required to chase it down once gone. Unfortunately and too often,
contractors wait until something is stolen before starting to look at
implementing a theft protection strategy. The goal of this article is
both to educate on the benefits of asset tracking for theft protection
and how it works as well as to demonstrate that when it comes to theft,
an ounce of prevention is definitely worth a pound of cure.
With
industry losses exceeding $1 billion annually in the United States,
equipment owners are turning to technology to curb this fast growing
epidemic. GPS tracking, one component of the broader technology named
"telemetry", is quickly becoming the innovative solution of choice. Many
equipment owners are already aware of and evaluating telemetry systems
on the merits of their productivity enhancing, service management and
diagnostic capabilities. The technology has been around even longer for
trucks, yielding benefits such as fuel savings, increased driver
accountability and extended vehicle life. The added bonus is the theft
protection component, which any savvy fleet manager should include in
their assessment of this technology.
To better understand how to
combat theft with GPS and asset tracking, we first must explore why it
is so easy to steal trucks and equipment by comparing and contrasting
them:
1. Easy Access - Since most equipment is
universally keyed, a single key starts any machine from the same
manufacturer. Unfortunately any thief in the world can get these keys at
a local dealership or even easier, online. Since the equipment is
literally sitting on the side of the road or behind a chain link fence,
all the crooks have to do is hop in and drive off. Though chain link
fences once were a sufficient deterrent, thieves now simply jump over
them, drive the machine through them and load the stolen equipment in
the street. The average construction equipment theft takes about twenty
minutes.
For trucks, the theft occurs in a matter of minutes with a
quick break in and hotwire. Vehicle theft is often more brazen: we have
customer stories (prior to installing a tracking solution) of trucks
being stolen out of a diner parking lot while the driver was inside
eating and in other instances even while the trucks idled unattended in
the morning to warm up.
2. Delay in Discovery -
Equipment can sit for days at a time without anyone touching it, but
assumed to be in the same place. Thieves are smart and will routinely
steal on Friday night or over a weekend, knowing that nobody will be
back to the jobsite until Monday morning. This gives them several days
head start before the theft is even discovered.
Since trucks are
an integral part of transportation, their theft typically comes to light
within a few hours of their disappearance.
3. Difficulty in Recovery
- Stolen equipment is easily moved out of the country or resold on the
auction block to an unsuspecting buyer, yet kept whole for the most
part. Organized crime rings are becoming the major players, and even
worse, a number of theft organizations post the recovery rate for stolen
equipment at a mere 20%.
A thief's modus operandi with trucks,
especially service trucks, is to loot the vehicle for tools and parts.
Trucks have a higher recovery rate but are often found abandoned, and
stripped of everything valuable. We have even seen stolen trucks used
simply to commit other crimes, as getaway cars or transporting
contraband.
The crooks can easily get to your assets, start them
just as easily and get a significant head start. The deck is clearly
stacked in the thieves' favor, but now you have an opportunity to swing
the advantage back to your side -- asset tracking.
Locking it down
Prevention
is the preferred strategy for protecting against theft. In addition to
reducing potential damage to your asset and avoiding spending hours
coordinating a recovery effort, prevention methods keep the thieves from
moving your assets at unauthorized times. To implement a preventive
approach, the specific facets of the GPS tracking technology come into
play.
Since equipment theft typically occurs after hours or on
weekends when witnesses are less likely, a GPS unit will setup a curfew
on your equipment at that time. What that means is that the unit will
literally call your cell phone, pager, PDA or drop you an email if
someone tries to start the machine or moves it during those off hours.
The system can even go as far as to automatically disable the equipment
from running at that time. It's all based around your schedule of
operation, and if you ever need the machine during those off hours
simply login to the software and remotely lift the curfew.
Let's
say you routinely want your machines available to run from 7 a.m. to 7
p.m. Monday through Saturday, with Sunday off. At 7 PM every night and
all day Sunday your machines will automatically disable themselves and
call you if someone touches the key switch or manages to move the
equipment. At 7 a.m., everything goes back to normal and nobody is the
wiser. If you need that piece to run until 10 PM, simply login online
and 30 seconds later your machine is enabled to run. Conversely, if you
know an asset will sit for a longer time or goes missing, then login and
set the curfew to disable immediately and remain disabled until you
tell it otherwise. From any Internet connected computer or PDA anywhere
in the world, you are in control to shut down your assets at any time.
This powerful feature is particularly useful over the long holiday
weekends, when assets are sitting and thieves are on the prowl.
For
trucks, the curfew has the added benefit of curbing unauthorized use
and mileage by the driver, particularly when they take the trucks home
on nights and weekends. As before, the curfew can emit the silent alarm
for movement, disable the truck or perform both depending on your needs.
For those who put full faith in their service truck drivers, an option
exists where the driver manually engages the alarm/disable combination
via a hidden switch every time he leaves the truck and disengages it
when he returns. If a theft attempt occurs, the tracking system calls
his phone immediately and he can return to the truck. This is especially
effective when trucks go home with the drivers, as they will always be
arming the system and near the asset if it alerts.
Consider the
case of a Tracy, Calif., contractor who got a call on his cell phone
late one Sunday night indicating that somebody was trying to start his
Caterpillar backhoe during the curfew. Upon arriving at his yard after
he remotely confirmed the backhoe's location via the online satellite
image in the software, the contractor found his guard dogs poisoned but
all his equipment intact. Unfortunately the neighboring contractor's
yard was also broken into and the identical model backhoe, which was
unprotected, was stolen.
Organized crime rings are the major
players and they will case multiple jobsites and yards to plot out
target A, target B, etc. So when the thieves' attempt for a quick grab
was thwarted by the disabled machine, they simply went for the next
available, easier target. By immobilizing the equipment with a curfew,
the target was "hardened" and the vandals were deterred. This technique
is also very effective in warding off other subcontractors and late
night joy riders, who typically end up damaging the equipment, jobsite
or themselves.
Eyes in the sky
From a
recovery standpoint, GPS by itself accomplishes this by empowering the
equipment owner to find his or her asset anytime from an Internet
connected computer. Simply login, request the most recent location
update (i.e. "ping the machine") to see the current address and mapped
location. If the machine isn't where it is supposed to be, then call the
police and route them to it. And for the more courageous manager, you
always have the option to chase down the machines yourself as one
Maryland contractor did when his subs stole two of his compressors. Upon
receiving a geofence (an invisible perimeter breach violation)
notification from the transponder unit to his phone, the Vice President
of Operations sat down at his computer and remotely used his GPS
tracking system to locate them in one of their subcontractor's garage.
Within
minutes, his nearest crew truck pulled up to the garage to recover the
stolen property and confront the subs, who had removed the compressors
just hours before in broad daylight. The importance of being able to
locate a stolen asset immediately with GPS was underscored in this case,
as the subs had already scraped off the company identifying marks and
were cannibalizing the assets for parts by the time the crew truck
arrived. If the recovery had waited another day, then the compressors
would have been gone altogether.
"We discovered the value of the
Titan system after recovering only two pieces of equipment," said the
Maryland contractor (anonymity requested for security purposes). "And
when you've recovered your equipment and you see it coming back to the
yard, you realize you'd be willing to pay a lot more for it".
Another
important GPS based feature is the homing beacon, which remotely
instructs the unit to send out a location every two minutes. This
creates a "bread crumb trail" and all the police need to do is follow
the dots to the stolen asset. Most GPS systems will give you a satellite
image of the assets location, which is necessary since stolen assets
usually end up well off the beaten path. Imagine the surprise a North
Carolina company received when they located one of their missing
machines in Texas, just twenty minutes from the Mexican border. They
remotely turned on the homing beacon and routed the local authorities to
its hiding place for recovery. Using both the map and satellite view,
the owner informed the police exactly which Texas wrecking yard's tree
line was hiding the stolen asset.
As often happens, this one
recovery yielded even more recoveries since that wrecking yard was a
staging area for stolen equipment being sourced from all over the
country. Their procedure was to strip the decals and identifying marks
off in the Texas yard, and then move the contraband across the Mexican
border and on to their buyers.
Taking it to the bank
If
the peace of mind isn't enough to encourage you to protect your entire
fleet, then the insurance savings will. As insurance rates continue to
rise, a recent theft on the record is sure to skyrocket your premiums.
With over 50 percent of equipment losses due to theft, you are cutting
your risk by that same percentage when you use GPS technology. You
should expect a generous discount from your insurer for this proactive
approach. We are seeing premium reductions anywhere between 20 to 50
percent below industry standard rates, where the savings often pay for
the entire system in less than two years. Typically the theft discount
is not as substantial for trucks, however controlling driving speeds
does help reduce accidents and over time will improve your premiums.
The
costs of theft run much deeper than just replacing the stolen asset.
You have to factor in the downtime for the operator and the job, the
cost of the replacement rental, the time required working with the
authorities as well as the paperwork for both the theft and the
insurance claim.
From time to time, the statement "we don't have a
theft problem" comes up when exploring GPS tracking technology. In the
first 8 months of 2010, we recovered a dozen stolen assets across the
country. This is the most activity we have seen in ten years and drives
home the unfortunate reality that every contractor has a theft problem,
some of them just don't know it yet. For this reason if you are going to
invest in an asset management technology, then theft prevention should
be as much a part of the criteria as anything else.
