The manager of a rental company recently contacted the Colorado Springs, Colo., police department on a Sunday morning to report the theft of a Terex mini excavator from the company's lot during the night. Thieves had attempted to take the excavator on Friday night, but were apparently defeated by locks on the machine. But with more boldness than brains, it seems, they returned the next night and made off with the Terex. The rental company, however, had installed a LoJack stolen-vehicle recovery system some three months earlier. When police entered the machine's informa- tion into the National Crime Information Center computers, the LoJack transponder concealed in the Terex activated automatically. Law enforcement picked up the signals with LoJack tracking computers, which are installed in police vehicles and aircraft, and the $40,000 machine was quickly recovery-but, unfortunately, the bad guys got away. According to LoJack, the National Insurance Crime Bureau estimates annual loses from heavy-equipment theft at near $ 1 billon, with less than 20 percent of stolen machines recovered.
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