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Employees at Sandpiper Contracting came to work the morning of May
26th and discovered one of their backhoes had been stolen over the
weekend from a jobsite. In a few minutes they had located it parked
on the side of a road in Mission BC and informed the police as to
its whereabouts. They were able to do this because they had a Global
Positioning System (GPS) locator device hidden on the backhoe. This
device beams a signal to a satellite and from there to a ground station,
where the owners can check on the location of the vehicle at any time.
While employees of Sandpiper were on their way out to meet the police
and recover the stolen backhoe, it was moved again. However, back
at the office they tracked it being moved and were able to inform
police and the company employees the new location of the backhoe,
on a property a few hundred feet away from where it had originally
been left. The employees went there, and met the Mission RCMP at the
backhoe, recovered it, and carried on back to work. Police are currently
investigating the theft.
As Colleen Kott, Sandpiper Administrative Manager says, “Our
vehicles are all insured, but we don’t want to have to wait
for settlements and lose time on the job. That’s why we put
GPS locators in our assets. This has just proved to us that we made
a good decision.” Sandpiper has 17 different vehicles equipped
with GPS locators . As a utility contractor for Lower Mainland
municipalities, Sandpiper has to leave vehicle assets on job sites
for extended periods of time. They have had them stolen before, but
have never been able to recover a missing vehicle as quickly and easily.
As David Katz, President of Nero Global Tracking – the company
that installed and operates the GPS locator system - says “ When
a company knows where each of its vehicles is all the time, and can
find them immediately if they’re taken, they can reduce theft
and lost work time. This technology also puts a lot of fear into potential
thieves.” |
