will be back to the jobsite until Mondaymorning. This gives them severaldays head start before the theft iseven discovered. Since trucks are anintegral part of transportation, theirtheft typically comes to light withina few hours of their disappearance.Difficulty in Recovery — Stolenequipment is easily moved outof the country, chopped for partsor resold on the auction block toan unsuspecting buyer. Organizedcrime rings are becoming the majorplayers, and even worse, a numberof theft organizations post the recoveryrate for stolen equipment ata mere 20 percent. A thief’s modusoperandi with trucks, especiallyservice trucks, is to loot the vehiclefor tools and parts. Trucks have ahigher recovery rate but are oftenfound abandoned and stripped ofeverything valuable.The crooks can easily get to your assets, start them just aseasily and get a significant head start. Should you experienceequipment theft, the best you can expect is a one in five chanceof recovery. The deck is clearly stacked in the thieves’ favor, butnow you have an opportunity to swing the advantage back toyour side — GPS tracking.Criminal IntentPrevention is the preferred strategy for protecting againsttheft. In addition to reducing potential damage to your assetand avoiding spending hours coordinating a recovery effort,prevention methods keep the thieves from moving yourassets at unauthorized times. To implement a preventiveapproach, the specific facets of the GPS tracking technologycome into play.Since theft typically occurs after hours or on weekends,when witnesses are less likely, a GPS unit will set up acurfew on your equipment at that time. What that meansis that the unit will literally call your cell phone, pager orPDA or drop you an e-mail if someone tries to start themachine or moves it during those off hours. The systemcan even go as far as to automatically disable the equipmentfrom running at that time. It’s all based around yourschedule of operation, and if you ever need the machineduring those off hours simply log in to the software andremotely lift the curfew.Let’s say you routinely want your machines available torun from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, withSunday off. At 7 p.m. every night and all day Sunday yourmachines will automatically disable themselves and call youif someone touches the key switch or manages to move theequipment. At 7 a.m., everything goes back to normal andnobody is the wiser. If you need that equipment to run until10 p.m., simply log in online and 30 seconds later yourmachine is enabled to run. Conversely, if you know an asset28 <strong>Utility</strong> <strong>Contractor</strong> | <strong>January</strong> 2009A single map displays all this contractor’s equipment and truck locations at once.will sit for a longer time or goes missing, then log in and setthe curfew to disable immediately and remain disabled untilyou tell it otherwise. From any Internet connected computeror PDA anywhere in the world, you are in control to shutdown your assets at any time. This powerful feature is particularlyuseful over the long holiday weekends, when assetsare sitting and thieves are on the prowl.For trucks, the curfew has the added benefit of curbing unauthorizeduse and mileage by the driver, particularly whenthey take the trucks home on nights and weekends. As before,the curfew can emit the silent alarm for movement, disable thetruck or perform both depending on your needs. For thosewho put full faith in their service truck drivers, an option existswhere the driver manually engages the alarm/disable combinationvia a hidden switch every time the driver leaves the truckand disengages it when he or she returns. If a theft attempt occurs,the tracking system calls the driver’s phone immediatelyand he or she can return to the truck.Consider the case of a Tracy, Calif., contractor who got acall on his cell phone late one Sunday night indicating thatsomebody was trying to start his Caterpillar backhoe duringthe curfew. Upon arriving at his yard after he remotelyconfirmed the backhoe’s location via the online satellite imagein the software, the contractor found his guard dogs poisonedbut all his equipment intact. Unfortunately the neighboringcontractor’s yard was also broken into and the identical modelbackhoe, which was unprotected, was stolen.Organized crime rings are the major players and theywill case multiple jobsites and yards to plot out target A,target B, etc. So when the thieves’ attempt for a quick grabwas thwarted by the disabled machine, they simply wentfor the next available, easier target. By immobilizing theequipment with a curfew, the target was “hardened” andthe vandals were deterred. This technique is also very effectivein warding off other subcontractors and late nightjoy riders, who typically end up damaging the equipment,jobsite or themselves.
SRU — The Special Recovery UnitFrom a recovery standpoint, GPS by itself accomplishesthis by empowering the equipment owner to find his orher asset anytime from an Internet connected computer.Simply log in, request the most recent location update(i.e., “ping the machine”) to see the current address andmapped location. If the machineisn’t where it is supposed to be,then call the police and route theinfo to them.For the more courageous manager,you always have the optionto chase down the machinesyourself as one Maryland contractordid when his subs stoletwo of his compressors. Uponreceiving a geofence (an invisibleperimeter breach violation) notificationfrom the transponderunit to his phone, the Vice Presidentof Operations sat down athis computer and remotely usedhis GPS tracking system to locatethem in one of their subcontractor’sgarage.Within minutes, his nearestcrew truck pulled up to the garageto recover the stolen propertyand confront the subs, whohad removed the compressors just hours before in broaddaylight. The importance of being able to locate a stolenasset immediately with GPS was underscored in this case,as the subs had already scraped off the company identifyingmarks and were cannibalizing the assets for parts bythe time the crew truck arrived. If the recovery had waitedA red unit indicates an unauthorized use alarm. The map may bezoomed in to the street level for faster theft recovery, while the aerialview provides landmarks and references relative to the asset’s location.<strong>January</strong> 2009 | <strong>Utility</strong> <strong>Contractor</strong> 29
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