$100,000 Gone
Over a Long Weekend

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What Happened

Henry Small, co-founder of Paving Pros LLC, told WMBF News that someone cut the lock on his equipment yard sometime between Saturday night and Tuesday morning, hooked up a trailer with a skid steer loaded on it, and drove off. The numbers: roughly $87,000 for the skid steer, another $12,000 for the trailer, close to $100,000 total. Both pieces were about a year old.

Small filed a police report but told the station he is not sure the equipment will ever come back. He is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the return of the skid steer and trailer, and has asked the community to keep an eye out.

Call 800-578-1809

What the Loss Actually Costs

This was not his only skid steer, but it was one of several, and each one has a job to do. Losing it slows production down.

That is the part insurance does not cover. A claim might eventually replace the machine. It does not replace the weeks of scheduling, the jobs pushed back, the crews standing around waiting on equipment that is not there. For a working contractor, downtime compounds fast.

What Changes the Outcome

A GPS tracker on that skid steer changes the Saturday-to-Tuesday window entirely. A geofence around the yard sends an alert the moment the machine crosses the boundary, not two days later. Instead of filing a report with a description and a serial number, the owner hands law enforcement a live location.

For equipment that lives outside in a yard, the practical requirements are specific:

  • Discreet placement somewhere a thief will not find in a quick sweep
  • A sealed, weather-rated unit that holds up to rain, dust, heat, and cold without a protective enclosure
  • An internal backup battery, so cutting power to the machine does not end the signal
  • Geofence and movement alerts that fire the instant an asset leaves where it belongs

The question worth asking is not how to make the yard impossible to enter. It is what happens in the hours after someone gets in. Without tracking, the answer is a police report and a reward offer. With it, the answer is a phone call with an address attached.

If you have six figures of equipment sitting in a yard this weekend, that difference is worth thinking about before Monday.

Want to try it out?

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