Construction equipment thefts prove nothing’s too big to steal
Published in: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Date: 7/17/2005
By: Moustafa Ayad
Jul. 17–Under the cover of darkness last weekend, an unknown culprit sneaked onto a construction site at the Beaver County High School and rode off into the night with a 3,000-pound roller about as big as a Toyota Echo.
The slow-moving, faded-yellow heavy machinery isn’t exactly a thief’s most prized getaway vehicle. But it got away nonetheless.
According to police, construction companies and insurers, work sites around the country are being pillaged by thieves
“They steal dozers, tractors, rollers, loaders and anything they can get their hands on,” said Tim Ellison, vice president for sales at the Knickerbocker Russell Co. in Pittsburgh, the equipment sales and rental company that lost its roller last weekend in Beaver County.
“It happens daily. Equipment as small as a hammer or a drill to machines as large as a roller, any of those things are fair game.”
The National Equipment Register, an organization that provides information on heavy equipment theft and ownership, estimates that construction theft costs companies between $300 million and $1 billion a year.
In its 2004 Equipment Theft Report the Register listed Pennsylvania as fifth in the country for construction thefts. Thirty-eight percent of all equipment theft in the country took place within the borders of those top five states — Texas, North Carolina, California, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Rival construction companies — companies with smaller staffs, tighter budgets and a need for a lot of the larger expensive equipment — can often turn into prime suspects. But industry insiders may be a smaller portion of the criminal element robbing construction sites. Organized crime has been a growing part of this business in recent years.
For most of the winter of 2004, Joseph Farrell and Christopher Tuszynski raided construction sites, stealing everything from dump trucks to industrial backhoes, Pennsylvania State Police said.
Aided by Wallace Moretti, Joseph’s father-in-law, they began distributing and storing the equipment they stole at their homes and at the Superspeed and Performance mechanic’s shop in Neville Township, according to police.
At their homes, car dealerships and chop shops through out southwestern Pennsylvania, the trio ran what police call an organized theft ring specializing in construction equipment netting hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.
The Pennsylvania State Police said the brothers drove the $500,000 in equipment they allegedly stole and stored it without much of fear of police interference. The brothers were able to make off with more than 10 skid steers — miniature bulldozers used for earth moving or heavy lifting. They also got their hands on two excavators, police said.
All three are awaiting a Sept. 8 preliminary hearing for their involvement in the thefts.
“These guys will take back a front end loader, change the keys, paint it and use it the next block over,” said Ellison. “It’s sickening.”
“Often times it’s pre-sold,” said Ryan Shepherd, an analyst for the National Equipment Register. “They steal it, deliver it and sell it before anyone knows it’s even gone.”
Speedy getaways become less of a necessity when thieves have the keys to the equipment they steal and access to even larger moving machinery.
Therein lies much of the problem. When heavy machinery is left for long periods of time — over weekends and long holidays, for example — it becomes easy targets for thieves with sets of universal keys.
Many companies manufacture keys that can turn on multiple pieces of machinery to simplify operations. Only cranes and much larger equipment typically have unique keys.
Thieves with construction experience capitalize on the universality of the keys and show up at abandoned sites, turn on the ignition and drive the machinery away.
“It’s like leaving a brand new Porsche out with the keys in the ignition,” said Shepherd, the equipment theft analyst. ” I don’t think any rational person would do that.”
EBay, the online auction site, is currently holding auctions for 17 sets of keys for machinery made by all the major manufacturers of heavy equipment. One auctioneer, the self-proclaimed “Original Keyman,” assures potential key buyers that he is an operating engineer and all of his keys are authentic.
Much of the equipment used at construction sites bears no formal title or registration. The only unique markings are the Vehicle Identification Numbers on the machinery. The numbers are often changed or damaged so that investigating officers have to cross-reference the equipment with company records.
“These guys will run until they get caught,” said Scott Monroe, a state trooper who works the Western Heavy Equipment Theft Division of the Pennsylvania State Police. “When they do get caught they get small sentences and a lot of the time they’re right back at it.”
Police and prosecutors face an uphill battle tracking down many of the thieves. Construction equipment may be big and yellow, but it shares no other quite so distinctive markings.
Stolen heavy machinery has a quick turnover rate. Bulldozer bandits often have shopping lists with requested items and have no problems finding buyers, police said.
“There is no good way to track these things. It’s not easy to find out where a machine started life, let alone where it’s been or where it’s going,” said Frank Zangar, law enforcement liaison with the LoJack Corp. LoJack can install small cigarette sized tracking devices in construction equipment to aid police in locating stolen property. The devices emit a signal to police scanners that can track the equipment down to its exact location.
Recovery rates are dismal for a lot of the stolen equipment.
Even though Pennsylvania ranks in the top five states for equipment theft, it’s not even listed on the top 10 list for most recoveries. Industry reports say as little as 10 percent of the equipment is recovered. Police with limited resources, lack of viable leads and the complexity of tracking equipment numbering adds to the low recovery rate.
“We basically can’t protect the equipment at sites,” said Paul Pitts, assistant store manger for NationsRent Co. in Pittsburgh. Pitts recalled when thieves broke into the company’s lot and made off with skid-steers, loaders, a mixer and a tilt truck. Most of the equipment was recovered, after it was dumped in Lawrenceville.
Devices from LoJack and other firms offer a viable security option for some construction equipment retailers. Once installed, generally on larger pieces of machinery, such systems can be used to rapidly recover stolen equipment.
However, the $600 price tag on LoJack’s device, even though minuscule in comparison to the equipment it can help protect, does not generally entice construction equipment owners into ordering the product.
Many contractors and rental agencies prefer more traditional cost-saving measures. Locking steering wheels with padlocks, hanging generators from cranes and encircling all of the high-priced smaller equipment with large, harder-to-steal machinery can all be low-cost and help protect equipment.
Between 1996 and 2001 equipment theft rose 64 percent, according to the Equipment Register Report. Along with the jump in thefts came the exponential growth of insurance claims. For each of the past 10 years insurance companies have reported a 10 to 20 percent increase in the number of construction theft reports.
“That’s 10 to 20 thefts a day across the nation and that doesn’t include the uninsured,” said Ryan.” Protecting your equipment and taking it back to a storage facility during long weekends or holidays could make all the difference.”
Copyright (c) 2005, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.