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Steve Hudson

Watch Your Stuff!
July 9, 2008

When the clock radio went off this morning (at a ridiculously early hour, by the way, but a necessary one due to Youngest Son’s driver’s ed class, which starts at an equally ridiculous hour, but that’s another story and a lot of commas too) the news was on, as usual.

It’s nice to listen to the news first thing in the morning. It kind of makes you feel like a responsible citizen. It also gives you valuable clues on what sort of crises might be facing civilization that particular day.

Some mornings I’ll just listen for a few minutes – and, truth be told, a lot of times the news really doesn’t have a lot of direct impact on my little corner of the world.

But this morning it did. The very first story I heard was about thievin’ thieves, dastardly sorts who were actively stealing (are you ready?) construction materials. Theft of equipment is nothing new, but this recent move toward theft of materials may be taking some folks by surprise.

The hottest items, apparently, are things made of high-dollar goodies made of copper or other materials with significant value as scrap. Wire, pipe, roofing and other copper goodies – which are easy to convert to cash – seem to actively draw the bad guys’ eyes.

But that’s not all that they’re after. Now that I think about it, I’ve been hearing of other construction materials being swiped too. A month or two ago one contractor I know mentioned that he’d lost a bunch of gravel – apparently, one Saturday, somebody pulled up with a pickup and a shovel and went to work. Another noted that he’d lost some pipe sections. Still others have commented on the occasional disappearance of such things as rebar (the conjecture in that particular case was that the steel ended up serving as tomato stakes, but you never really know).

So far, I haven’t heard of anybody swiping concrete piling or steel beams. But in these increasingly challenging times even that may just be a matter of time.

So watch your stuff. Even small thefts, like a dozen sticks of rebar or that pickup truck load of gravel, can build up over time.

Have you had trouble with jobsite material theft? How do you handle it, and what do you do to prevent it? I’d be interested in knowing.

Posted by Steve Hudson on July 9, 2008 | Comments (0)