They're all tagged with GPS trackers these days. The rare case of heavy equipment like that being stolen almost always results in recovery because of that. I would recommend just trying to steal some parts of the machine, rather than the whole thing. If you do enough research and presell the parts before taking them you would probably get away with it for a while.

Thought exercise only, I ain't cut out for the life of crime.

Hydraulic cylinders would probably be a good place to start, just based on anecdata from seeing equipment down for long, expensive periods of time as cylinders go off for rebuild/reseal/resleeving.

What thieves seem to go for nowdays is the d-gps hardware installed in graders / excavators used in large projects. Very expensive stuff which is easy to hide. A Leica 3d kit is something like $40k...

I've heard the same[1], but that kind of thing seems trivially easy to track down, no?

[1]In fact I was involved on a project where some thieves took a sawzall to the equipment storage conex over the weekend and stole every bit of GPS equipment they could get their hands on. They were pretty quickly tracked down when they tried to offload it though.

Could sell it outside of the country? It does make me wonder.

Maybe theft is proportional to value density?

Theft is often a crime of convenience. It’s counterintuitive, but thefts actually tend to go down during recessions. People just don’t leave the house as much, so they don’t have as many opportunities to steal.

Source: good friend was a public defender

They even often all share the same ignition key.

Are you confident that is the case today? I know it used to be the case like 30 years ago, but I thought that was fixed since. Or did the advent of GPS trackers allow them to go back to The One Key? :-)

Oh 50/50. I know for a fact that the fleet of haul trucks on my current project all share the same key, and the bulldozers and excavators from the same manufacturer do as well.

I expect that equipment in rental fleets are keyed differently, though.

Interesting, thanks. I've long since become a software dev with tender, callous-free hands so I have no idea what the current state is.

For a lot of cat equipment this is true.

Go to a caterpillar dealer, and you can ask for a new key by model number. They don't need serial numbers.

Lojack has often been installed on construction equipment since the 80s or 90s.