Plant Thieves Love the Dark Nights

With the dark nights upon us and the Christmas shutdown rapidly approaching for the construction industry, plant machinery is more at risk of theft than ever before.

The dark winter months present more opportunities for plant thieves to steal equipment. Construction sites and depots are often located in remote, poorly lit areas, allowing criminals to hide under the cover of darkness. Plant thieves are all too aware that many construction sites shut down for two weeks over the festive period, often with little security and with kit parked up unoccupied.

It’s therefore essential that your plant security is increased during the winter months. At AMI Group, we offer a range of cost-effective plant tracking devices which can assist the safe return of plant machinery in the unfortunate event of it being stolen. This small investment can pay dividends, as the money spent on increasing security measures can be quickly recovered through insurance discounts, reduced claims and less downtime.

Virtually on a daily basis we are helping AMI Group customers across the UK to locate and recover stolen equipment as a result of the use of state-of-the-art tracking devices which utilise GPS (Global Positioning System), GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and RF (Radio Frequency) technology. Once an AMI tracking device is fitted to a piece of machinery, customers can logon to the AMI Nexis web-based portal to establish its destination in the event of it being stolen.

Over £245 million worth of customer assets are now protected with AMI Group systems, including several of the UK’s national plant hirers and construction companies. As well as helping our customers recover their own plant, our tracking systems have also helped the Police to recover thousands of pounds of construction equipment not protected with an anti-theft deterrent. In one recent example, a £15,000 valued 1 Ton Terex Dumper owned by one of our customers was successfully retrieved in Cheshire thanks to an AMI anti-theft system, and it also led the Police to several other items of construction machinery stored in an isolated rural area including a Bobcat Excavator, a Trailer and a Volvo Digger. Together, the haul of recovered plant equipment was valued at over £100,000.