I was reading in about theft on the bulldozer section of this site and was blown away by the stories. I don,t even know if the key comes out of my hoe (or pick-up for that matter). I think it's pretty sad but makes for interesting reading, I know it changed the way I do things around here.
I am almost scared to go look at those threads. We bought a five acre farm with no buildings on it in NC and I bought a Case 580SE so I could do work on it. The problem is I don't live there, at least not yet and my backhoe sits there where anyone could strip it. Knowing that we wanted to protect it over the winter we bought sign tarps, (14X48 foot) and covered it with four of them. We were told that even with it being a very small county with sparse population drug users would try to remove and sell parts. We actually parked it near the road so neighbors and the sheriff could see it. We will go up in May to start building a barn for it and hope all the parts are still there. My other concern is rats and wiring however I did leave four boxes of moth ball inside. I am assured of having no moths.
Stinky oder pine three for cars will keep mices away , also can use bounce sheets ( or nay other stinky brand of fabirc softner) , as far as the rest is concerne for parts it is vey sensitive to leave machinery like that but we have no choice some time .
A bit off the subject,The tarps look good to keep the rain and snow out,and as you mentioned the Thieves,rodents is a chance taken. I was thinking just how much moisture those tarps are going trap over the winter hibernation, corrosion could take place. Just a thought.
some time's it's not all bad to have a machine stolen. my machine was stolen in 1998 & recoverd in 2009 after 11 years i bought it from insurance company for $1500.00. bad for owner good for me . just saying tb
Good for you Trevor, but these guys are talking about only putting enough fuel for the day so the tanks are empty at night (nothing to steal) and have to weld battery boxes closed so the leads aren't cut and batteries gone in the morning....................crazzzzy
i hear you please don't get me wrong in no way do i condone theft ,i had a plow truck and a new snowmobile stolen.over the year's not fun!!! just my sick sense of humor sorry tb.
The tarps I used are like pond liners/signs, they use them around here to line ponds and each tarp weighs 80 pounds. I put down two overlapping to make about 48X24 feet and drove the hoe over them. The 24 being front to back and over lapped them from side to side. Up near the top I arranged it so air could get in and out but no water. Just a slight breeze vents it well and no moisture can get in from the bottom. I don't think rust will be an issue and if I did a good job at the bottom rats will stay out unless they chew though it. When the barn is finished it will be vented but rats will still be a problem. How easy or hard is it to get insurance on a older backhoe? Who do you go to, not an auto insurance company I hope! And of course how much does it cost? I don't use it for any type of business so if parts got stolen I would be heart broken but it would not effect my income.
Yair...We once had the radiator, lift rams and a final ripped out of a D6 overnight...the boss reckoned it definately wasn't an inside job because us blokes were'nt that good LOL. Cheers.
It's not just equipment that gets taken, last weekend one of my customer's woke up to find a thief at 5:00 am with a heavy fog and light rain, dogs barking, outside lights on, pushing his jd gator down his driveway, they had been threw his pickup and stole his golf cart also. The thief booked after he yelled at him and ran. No sign of golf cart and other property, just gone.
whatwas, not sure where you live, but consider yourself lucky to be there, but all things change, I too lived in a world like your in now, it ended a long time ago for me, sad to see it go, but things do change, sometimes not for the better though. As for thieves stealing stuff, my cousin who lives in a suburb was just robbed by a crew of "professional" thieves, they took everything of value out of their house, in broad daylight, in less time than it took for her to run her son to his middle school ball game and she went back home again, everything gone, half hour flat. The police told her to be prepared to be robbed in less than six months again, by the same crew, they know how long it takes to have things replaced and insurance kick in and its the "crews" signature of operation, the second time around they'll steal the new replacement things that are more valuable than the last batch. She was somewhat perplexed as to how they got the major appliances along with all the electronics and furniture out of the house so fast without anyone seeing anything in the busy neighborhood in broad daylight on a saturday afternoon, when it took them three days to get the stuff in a year ago with plenty of help to get it done. She was thinking it would take a couple dozen guys or more to do it so fast and yet nobody saw a thing, not a big vehicle to hold it all or plenty of smaller vehicles to hold it all in separate loads and nobody's security cameras caught anything on tape, the police were baffled as well, they even have a task force dedicated to the crime ring for investigations and putting on seminars to the public to warn them. Now to top that one, there was an 80 acre farm of corn stolen around here two years ago, in broad daylight, yes the crew came in with combines, trucks, tractors and grain carts and combined the farm, hauled it off, now that took hours to do five hours in fact with the machines they had and crew it took and left the farmer to fight with insurance to get paid, they thought he was putting in a bogus claim and did it himself, since he was combining the rest of his at the time, only a neighbor lady saw a different colored combine in the field at the time it happened but just though the farmer traded machines and never paid any attention to it or even a description of the model of combine it was just the color, the field was right beside her house and when she left to go to town the combine operator waved her a friendly goodbye as she drove off, but she couldn't describe him at all, she never really looked, just assumed it was her neighbor since he waved and was friendly, just like the neighbor would have done. Others met the trucks on the road, but nobody saw or read the name on the doors of them, it never dawned on anyone they were stealing anything so nobody paid any attention, the descriptions were given to law enforcement but came up empty, the trucks were just nothing out of the ordinary and everyone has trucks just like them. Whatwas welcome to the forum.