Ep. 636 Jobsite Fuel Theft is on the Rise

Fuel theft is a serious and growing business risk. Rancho Mesa’s Alyssa Burley sits down with Jessee Keirstead, Rancho Mesa’s new Risk Control Consultant to discuss the rise of fuel theft on jobsites.

Show Notes: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Alyssa Burley

Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessee Keirstead

Editor: Jadyn Brandt

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 fuel theft on jobsites.

Jessee, welcome to the show.

Jessee Keirstead: Hey, how you doing?

AB: I'm doing great. We're happy that you're here. Now, fuel theft is often viewed as a minor inconvenience, however, in your recent article, you describe it as a serious and growing business risk. What factors are driving the increase in gasoline and diesel theft, especially in Southern California?

JK:  Yeah, I think you stated it well. I think it kind of used to be seen as a nuisance or a minor inconvenience. But with the rising cost of gas and diesel, especially here in California, with it being one of, if not the most expensive state in terms of gas and diesel costs, you know, people are going to go after it a little bit more. I think another thing that really kind of plays into the fuel theft is on the rise is that it's easily siphoned, right? So they can take it pretty easily. knowledge to go in and steal gasoline or diesel. There's avenues to offload it if possible, but a lot of thieves out there are going to try to use it to fuel their own equipment or their own vehicles and not necessarily even put it at risk to being resold, right? They can use it right away without even having to take it to a secondary market. And it's nearly impossible to trace. some sort of legal aspect of it down the road, you know, they're not really caught very often, I guess you could say.

AB: Yeah, so why are construction contractors particularly vulnerable to this fuel theft? And what are some of the operational and financial consequences that can result when fuel is stolen from a job site?

 JK: Yeah, so the consequences could be a little obvious,right? If you show up to a job site and there's no fuel and the equipment, obviously it's going to put some delays. Not just with production that day, but you might have to replace the equipment. So sometimes if you try to operate equipment without fuel in it, it could cause damage to the equipment, right? So there could be larger expenses associated with that. You could have damage to the protection areas of the job site, right? If someone sees an easy opportunity, they break into the job site, right? You know, the fencing, the monitoring equipment that you have associated with  that could be a secondary cost there. But I think just the overall nature of the operations when it comes to construction, you know, you have a lot of job sites that are in areas where they're not attended overnight. So you tend to leave a lot of equipment that does have a lot of fuel associated with it. And sometimes you have, you know, fuel on that site as well that you're using to refuel the equipment. So there's just a lot of opportunity there in areas that aren't usually heavily monitored. In addition to equipment, you have vehicles, generators, and a lot of bulk storage on those sites. So a lot of opportunity with a lot of means to really access that opportunity.

AB: Yeah. So you recommend a layered approach when combining physical security measures with procedural controls. What are some of the most effective strategies contractors can implement right away to reduce their risk of fuel theft?

JK:  Yeah, so there's a lot of methods out there. I think the biggest thing you want to do is, like you said, is try to take a layered approach. So the more barriers you place in between yourself and a potential theft, the more likely you are to prevent that from happening or maybe deter somebody who is a little bit more sophisticated and can recognize those protection measures to really not target your job site. I think when it comes to physical, there's a lot of things, you know, really just try to protect that bulk storage as much as possible. So there's things like tamper resistant locking features that you can place on like the gas caps and things like that.

Video monitoring, obviously making that obvious that that site is protected, especially with in our past podcast, we talked about like AI video monitoring that can show you alerts and really kind of take that extra layer to that video monitoring. Lighting and access control right so limit access to the site as well as limit access to the fuel the less people you have touching things or less less likely it's going to you know get out of control there internally and things will won't necessarily be left unlocked and those sorts of things fuel caps and anti-siphon devices are available too so especially if you have let's say, bulk storage on that site, that may be something that you really want to target in spending a little bit of extra money in terms of protecting that. It's a little easier for, you know, potential thieves to get into something like that and see that as a target to go after in terms of, you know, stealing gasoline and diesel. Sometimes the equipment can be a little bit more difficult to break into than a bulk fuel storage, right? But sometimes, again, that's not necessarily going to deter somebody. So that's available. The fuel caps and things like that, the secondary markets are available for the equipment as well, too. And then if you have those bulk storage on site, you can keep pumps and hoses locked in different compartments, things like that, or remove them from the device so that it's not easy to just pop up and use it to steal fuel.

Training obviously is key. So, you know, people how to completely monitor their site, notice suspicious activity, point out if there has been anything kind of modified on the job site, right? So if you see one thing wrong at the site or you start to notice some issues, we could prevent future reoccurrences, right? So limit the potential of that happening again. Administrative controls like logs and regular checks. So, you know, even if you're not going as far as logs in terms of fueling and equipment use, but regular checks of the equipment to make sure that there hasn't been any tampering or any damage, oftentimes thieves will come to the site, check it out first, see how easy it's going to be to steal something before they come back and try to, you know, follow through on that initial thought. And then something unique is too, is like staging the equipment and staging vehicles. So put it in areas where it's difficult to access or it does have a little bit more protection, right? Like it's covered by adequate lighting or it's near a busy area. So people are less likely to try to be incognito and get in there. And then, you know, things like parking vehicles so that, they are against either like a wall or another vehicle so that when the fuel tank opens, it might be prevented from opening, right? So unique kind of things like that.

So when you show up to the job site before you use it, you're going to have to move it away. But, you know, it might prevent somebody from sneaking in and try to steal some fuel from there. So, yeah, there's lots of avenues that you can pursue. And there may not be just one thing that would work directly, especially for certain sites, but the more you can add to that, the better.

AB: Yeah. And I like the fact that depending on the site, you may have three out of your five options or maybe you can implement all five. And so it's just picking that combination that's going to work best for that site.

JK: Yeah, absolutely.

AB: And then I was also thinking about SafetyOne™ to monitor or to document when a piece of equipment or a vehicle was filled up. Because if you at the end of the day, you fill up all the equipment. And then if you have a daily report or something like that through SafetyOne™, where you're completing this log saying, yeah, we filled it up at the end of the day. So it's ready to go to first thing tomorrow morning. And then you come in and all of the fuel's gone out of that piece of equipment, you know, hey, we actually documented it last night or yesterday that it was full. So then you know for sure that, yes, it was actually stolen and you're not just guessing.

JK: Yeah, that's a great idea. I think that there's kind of two things there that would be really beneficial is not just help out with that prevention measure and the awareness piece, but also that can play into production, you know, so those kind of go hand in hand. I think that it definitely would be beneficial to use our platform to go in there, document how often that's happening and compare it, especially if we're starting to see that there might be some issues. It can really help us determine where that's coming from. And even if it's not a theft issue, it might translate to a maintenance issue or something particularly happening with that piece of equipment, how it's being used, where it's being stored, whatever it is, right?

There's a number of things that might be, you know, come from that initial thought or that initial idea. But yeah, that's definitely something we can work on with you. Not just what we have, but also kind of cater it directly towards your operation, your job site, your specific equipment. So if that's something you want to work on together, we're happy to work on that with you.

AB: Yeah, you and the rest of the team are really good at taking the content that we have or the tools that we have and customizing them to our clients. So Jessee, thanks again for joining us in StudioOne™. I think this information is always really beneficial and helpful for our clients.

JK: Of course, happy to be here.

AB: Thank you 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.