Ep. 632 Construction Equipment Theft on the Rise
Rancho Mesa’s Alyssa Burley sits down with Jessee Keirstead, Rancho Mesa’s new Risk Control Consultant to discuss the growing threat of construction equipment theft and its costly impact on contractors nationwide. They cover practical strategies that can help protect valuable equipment, reduce losses, and improve recovery efforts.
Show Notes: Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter
Host: Alyssa Burley
Guest: Jessee Keirstead
Editor: Megan Lockhart
Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “Breaking News Intro” by nem0production
© Copyright 2026. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.
Transcript
Alyssa Burley: You’re listening to Rancho Mesa’s StudioOne™ podcast, where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your business thrive.
I’m your host, Alyssa Burley, and I’m joined by Jessee Keirstead, Risk Control Consultant with Rancho Mesa.
Today, we’re going to talk about the rise of construction equipment theft.
Jessee, welcome to the show.
Jessee Keirstead: Yeah, happy to be here.
AB: Good, I'm glad that you're here. So you recently wrote an article about construction equipment theft being a growing problem nationwide. What factors are making construction companies increasingly vulnerable to equipment theft, and what is the overall financial impact on the industry?
JK: Sure, I think one of the first things that you have to consider is we're dealing with really high-valued equipment here. And the number of marketplaces, secondary marketplaces that have emerged that make it available for equipment to be moved has made it a lot easier for thieves to pick up things and sell them anonymously or sell them a little bit easier. I think a common misconception, especially being down here in San Diego, is that when things are stolen, they cross the border. But in reality, the vast majority of equipment isn't even crossing the California border, let alone the international border. So it's kind of staying closer to home. And it's easy in some cases for people to break into some of the environments where our equipment is being stored and move it. I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of the business and the operations. Job sites are temporary, they're unfenced, they're located in either remote or high traffic areas where thieves can blend in. So they're kind of ideal conditions where things are left, right?
And even when we leave equipment at the yard or in a warehouse, we're not always taking additional steps to deter thieves. And thieves are pretty sophisticated in understanding where good systems are and where bad systems are, right? So it’s not hard for the people who spend a lot of time doing this to really identify who the easy targets are. And annually equipment that's range between 300 million and a billion dollars here in the United States. The average loss per incident is somewhere between $29,000 and $35,000.
So again, like I said, dealing with some pretty high-valued stuff here. It's not always just one piece of equipment. A lot of times it's multiple pieces of equipment. And then there's a lot of... Indirect or soft costs associated with that as well, too, that don't necessarily show up on a balance sheet. Things like downtime at the job site, cost of rentals to having to supplement the stolen equipment, delays in the project, higher insurance costs, deductibles associated with theft, as well as reputation. If a GC knows that a lot of your stuff is walking on the site, the last thing you need. is another thing, get it in the way of you obtaining jobs in the future.
AB: Yeah, yeah. Those are all really good points. Now, you outlines several layers of protection in the article. What are some of the most effective physical security measures and technology solutions contractors can implement to reduce the risk of theft?
JK: Sure. You know, some of it may sound basic and obvious, but things like perimeter fencing is the place where you always want to start. Good overall lighting, heavy duty access control. So, you know, a master lock doesn't really cut it nowadays anymore. Wheel blocks and chains. So even for smaller pieces of equipment, like we deal with a lot of landscapers, you know, a lot of sites we're going out to, we're seeing people put things like bike locks on. know, blowers and just handheld tools for landscapers. And just adding that additional layer slows people down or might make you less of an easy target. Boxing in equipment. So if we have equipment that's mobile, putting it between something like a building or a fence in another vehicle, if you're leaving it there overnight, again, might not always work, but again, adds another layer to hopefully deter somebody from going after it. Key management and procedures. So beyond just tracking where the keys are and locking them up. but maybe changing the type of keys so it's not a universal key or making it unique to that piece of equipment so that if that key walks, there's only one key that's going to work for it.
Equipment immobilization, so things like removing batteries from battery-powered equipment or removing small pieces of the machinery that makes it not work, right, if someone goes and tries to take it. So those are kind of more physical-related controls. And then when we talk about technology, One of the things I learned about when I came here to Rancho Mesa was the National Equipment Registry, which if you're not aware of, it's an agency that helps with theft prevention and recovery. The way to think about it is kind of like a DMV registry for equipment. So much like your vehicle, you enter your VIN into this national registry. So you can enter the VIN or serial number for the equipment into this registry. fee associated with that. But what they do is if there is a stolen piece of equipment, you can alert them. And now if there is a stop or somebody has to go through a way station and the authorities are alerted to look for a piece of equipment, they can match that serial number or VIN number with the registry. And if it comes up stolen, they can take that equipment back. It's not always going to work, but again, it's another layer that helps to deter the theft, right? So I definitely would recommend looking into that if you have the large value equipment.
GPS and telematics is, again, something that's really grown over the years. I think thieves have become a little bit more in tune into how to identify that and to track that and how to maybe avoid those things. But things like adding backup GPS are a smaller unit, hidden somewhere on the equipment in addition to what is obviously found, right? Again, not always going to go the distance, but sometimes that might help, you know, somebody goes and sees, okay, we have the tracker, we can take it off, and isn't going to be looking for a secondary piece of equipment or GPS. Geofencing. So if you have a way to track your equipment, you can have an outline over a map that basically if the equipment crosses the lines on the outside, the barriers of that map, you can alert, right? So if you're away from the job site and the equipment starts to walk from the job site, you know, you get alerted that that equipment is leaving.
Another piece of equipment that's somewhat newer is AI-powered security cameras. so beyond the traditional security camera is great might deter theft but again all you're going to get is a nice video of your equipment being stolen right it's not really going to help you find that equipment or even alert you in real time but what ai powered security cameras might be able to do is detect people or vehicles entering the job site at specific hours when they typically aren't and be able to send you an alert. So hopefully you can respond in time to prevent that theft from happening or alert the authorities rather that something's happening on the site. And then smart access control is something that we don't really see all the time. But again, you know, long term jobs with big pieces of equipment that may be high target. It might be good to look into things like keypads or badges or mobile locks or things like that to try to prevent, again, people from entering that equipment.
AB: So beyond locks and GPS tracking, you emphasize the importance of procedures and training. How can inventory management, employee education, and jobsite practices help prevent theft and improve recovery when equipment goes missing?
JK: Sure. Inventory management, I think it helps improve accountability. It helps us realize if things are missing a lot quicker and helps us respond a lot quicker as well too, right? So we can reach out to authorities, we can reach out to the NER, we can reach out to our teams and see if maybe somebody came and picked it up, right? So it helps us kind of improve that process and get things moving a little quickly. it could help reduce the potential of internal theft as well too, which is kind of a big thing, believe it or not, right? Not necessarily always someone from the company stealing physically themselves, but maybe leading information that goes to, you know, somebody else coming in and stealing from that job site. You know, if they know that... has their stuff together. They're tracking things. Again, just another deterrent to help maybe prevent that from leading towards theft. And, you know, when it comes to law enforcement, if you have your ducks in a row to show like, hey, we know that we didn't just forget the equipment or leave it at a different site or someone else came and picked it up, we have documentation or we have a process in place. It helps take that a little bit more seriously and that they're going to respond a little quicker to helping you try to hopefully recover that equipment.
When it comes to education, I think when you're purchasing a new piece of equipment, it's good to know, is that equipment stolen frequently, right? If it is, again, another piece that goes hand in hand is... is it stolen? So a lot of the thieves, you know, the more sophisticated ones, they have methods and means that are replicated or they're replicating on specific equipment or similar types of job sites. So if we're doing some research or figuring out how things are stolen, it might help us identify the more effective means to prevent that to be stolen, whether it's a physical thing or it's some sort of tracking or whatever it is, right? If we know exactly how that. typically being stolen. It helps us to identify ways that we can prevent it from happening. It reduces opportunity. So again, if we're aware of what's happening and how things are happening, we can try to implement measures as well as educate our employees and things that they can be doing, whether it's on the site, before they leave or when they're away from the site um understanding what what's happening out there in in the world you know helps us like try to prepare for it, right? And then we can hopefully encourage quick discovery and prompt reporting. So if we're training our employees, if we're noticing things happening on the site, right, notice something, say something to us, whether it's lighting being poor on the site or a lock being missing or a particular hole in the fence, those might be small little things that we think of, hey, it might be typical of this area. But it might be a longer symptomatic thing of something's leading towards something happening. Same thing with the equipment. If we're not... leaving it in designated spots where we see the key control slipping or we're not necessarily setting alarms or setting things that we need to do when we're leaving the site. We've got to make sure that we're staying on top of that. So it's going to take not just one person, but hopefully everybody out there is aware of what might lead to things happening.
So continuing with those education does help a lot. And then employees might not be aware of what suspicious activity is too, right? Especially on those busy urban areas where, you know, there's lots of people moving around. It might be difficult to understand, you know, what suspicious activity might be leading towards theft that a trained eye might be able to discern or be able to kind of detect and lead towards additional measures. But even a remote job site, right? There are things that might... towards indicating that people had been visiting the site when they shouldn't have been or maybe even scoping out the site. So that suspicious activity, again, it doesn't always lead to it, but it might set off alarm bells. And then with the instant investigations. um you know having our ducks in a row in terms of understanding what we need to identify from that equipment to help make it identifiable to those who might be recovering it right so unique uh indications on the equipment beyond just the serial number or the vin number maybe paint a particular area of the equipment or if you've adjusted that equipment you know keeping track of that so that it might make it a little bit more easily identifiable If you are trying to recover it, whether you're scanning the Facebook marketplace or Craigslist or, you know, OfferUp, right, or whatever, you know, whatever is out there, not just for yourself, but also for the authorities to kind of notice that that's your equipment and that hopefully get it back to you. But, you know, I think a lot of it boils down to if you're an easy target, you're going to have a higher probability of things. disappearing so and being aware of a lot of the new technology and and resources that are out there is helpful as well too.
So like I said the NER the national equipment registry was newer to me and I was very excited to learn about that and I’ve been sharing that with a lot of our clients but I think it's a good thing to look into especially if you have that high valued equipment that is particularly targeted. And then, you know, AI can be frustrating for a lot of employers for a number of reasons, but I think that there are some really good AI specific tools that are now becoming almost as affordable, if not affordable, as traditional tools that can supplement that to, you know, give us a little bit more of a targeted reaction time to understand when things are happening and respond a lot quicker.
AB: Yeah, you brought up something about adding something to the piece of equipment that is identifiable, like a company logo or something like that. And I just thought of... And when you go to sell that piece of equipment, remove that logo so that if you do see it on someone else's job site, you're going to know, oh, we took the logo off of that. It's no longer ours. But if you do see something that has your logo or something specific that you've painted or some alteration that you've made that you know right away if you see it. So something to remember if you're doing that. So long story short, it sounds like. You're not going to be able to prevent every theft, but there's a lot of things that you can do. And a combination of things, whether it's physical or you're using technology, is really the best approach is to find a couple different ways that you can try to make theft a little more difficult. and then be able to find your equipment if, in fact, it does get stolen, right?
JK: Yeah, absolutely. I think you nailed it.
AB: All right. Well, Jesse, thanks for joining me in StudioOne™.
JK: All right. Well, Jesse,
AB: Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne™. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share this episode and subscribe. For more insights like this, visit us at RanchoMesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.