The final countdown to Christmas has officially begun... with gifts stacked under the tree and Christmas shopping loaded in car boots, the festive period can be a prevalent time for thieves to strike.

When it comes to security, you could be forgiven for focusing solely on your home at Christmas time. But it's important not to neglect your car during the festive period. Extra vigilance is required to keep your vehicle secure at Christmas...
 

UK construction sites are increasingly being targeted by thieves who recognise the financial value of plant machinery.

Smaller items of plant equipment such as mini excavators and generators are often stolen from contract sites outside of working hours or whilst being hired out. Consequently, many plant hire firms are now investing in additional security measures such as on-site cameras, perimeter fences and tracking devices to keep their vehicles safe from theft.

Sure-Track is delighted to announce that Selwood, one of the UK's largest Plant Hire companies, has chosen us as their new provider for telematics across their fleet of plant machinery.

Selwood has opted for the brand new Security Keypad Immobiliser system with additional inputs and outputs reporting live into our online portal.

'You're only as good as your last performance.'

We all know the expression... and it's one that we live by here at Sure-Track. So it's always great to get some more successful recoveries under our belts. 

September was a busy month for Sure-Track, our finders successfully recovered five stolen assets with a combined value of over £100,000. Further cementing our belief that our vehicle tracking and recovery solutions are the very best on the market! 

Building and construction sites are perfect targets for thieves, especially when work has finished for the day and the site is empty.

In particular, we have recently noticed that generators are becoming an increasingly popular target for thieves. A stolen generator can be sold relatively quickly for a substantial amount of money. 

Our latest recovery was for a long standing customer, whose £20,000 generator was stolen overnight from construction site in the East of England. 

A recent survey carried out by the insurer Allianz Cornhill has revealed that more than £70M worth of construction and plant machinery was stolen from sites across the UK in 2016. It estimates that the UK construction industry is now losing over £800 million a year when other costs associated with plant theft are taken into account.

Thieves are attracted to plant machinery because of the generally very low recovery rates (less than 10%) compared with motor vehicles (55-60%). This is because plant machinery has few identifying marks that can be easily seen and lack of registration documents mean it is difficult for the police to identify stolen plant and return it to the owner.

It was a busy end to the year for Sure-Track, recovering over £100,000 worth of stolen assets for our customers. Evidence that our MT3 vehicle tracking and recovery device is the ideal solution for customers looking to protect their vehicles.

We work across various industries, and our recent recovery list shows just that:

A recent survey conducted for the Chartered Institute of Building identified that 92% of their respondents in the construction industry are affected regularly by theft, with over 21% of these revealing that theft takes place on a weekly basis from their sites.Theft of construction equipment runs at over £2 million per day in the UK and only about 5% is ever recovered.

This high volume of plant and construction theft means that many in the industry are taking extra precautions to ensure their sites and machinery are secure. Sure Track works with many plant and construction companies across the UK, who take advantage of our MT3 tracking and recovery unit to increase their chance of getting their equipment back quickly, should it ever be stolen.

Date: 07/12/15

Customer: Plant Hire Company

Asset stolen: Bobcat E25 2.5 Tonne Excavator

Asset value: £23,000

Date: 26/11/15

Customer: Plant Hire Company

Asset stolen: Takeuchi TB228 Excavator

Asset value: £25,000