STOLEN PLANT
On Saturday 9th March thieves broke into a secure compound at E.P.S. Hire Centres, Mytholmroyd depot. They were confronted with 2 mini excavators, a 1-ton and 1.6-ton, both equipped with KOSRAN ECV Plant Immobilisers. Fortunately they were unable to start these machines, however, using scaffolding planks in the yard they managed to move the 1-ton excavator enough to get behind it. Behind it were parked 2 Kubota U10 1-ton excavators, a Takeuchi TB016 excavator and a Thwaites 1-ton hi-tip dumper. All 4 were loaded on their vehicles and several other machines were damaged in the process.
I received a ‘phone call on Sunday about 11am to inform me that the gate was open and damaged but at the time I was enjoying the hospitality of the Sussex branch of CMPE. I made a call to my staff back at home who attended the site to secure it and inform the police. To my amazement the police were there within an hour. 2 of the excavators were equipped with ‘SATTRACK’ plant tracking units. We were unable to track them because by this time at least 12 hours had elapsed and they had already been found and disabled. We were unable to contact ‘SATTRACK’ as their emergency number was an answering machine. However, on Monday morning I did get an answer and they managed to ascertain the tracker had triggered a signal in the Seacroft area of Leeds at 10.10pm on Saturday night and this was conferred to the police at 10am on Monday.
At 10.30 am we had a call from the police who had spotted a Takeuchi excavator on a trailer in the Leeds area and when checking the van they found the dumper inside. The van and trailer were also stolen. During further investigations in the area by Jason and myself, we found a roll bar off one of the Kubota excavators, again, we contacted the Leeds police who gave us support within 10 minutes to enter the Gypsy site.
We recovered further panels off the Kubota and panels off one of our Benford rollers, which had been stolen 4 months earlier. On this occasion it appears that our plant tracking system is limited to only the first few hours after theft. But KOSRAN ECV stops them going in the first place.
Thanks have to go to the police who, on this occasion, moved very quickly to cut our losses to a minimum. As a company we believe if KOSRAN ECV had been fitted to all machines losses would have been limited to only damaged gates.
David Fielden
MD E.P.S. Hire Centre Limited
Member YORKSHIRE CMPE
