On July 2, 2017 a Kubota R520S valued at $70,000 was stolen from a construction site on Hochelaga street in Montreal, Quebec.
A local construction company dispatched a team to begin work right near the tunnel on Hochelaga street on July 3 at 5:00 AM. Upon arrival to the job site, they noticed that the Kubota machine they had planned to use was missing.
This team immediately flagged the theft to the owner of the company, who had intuitively installed a Cellutrak anti-theft and GPS tracking device to monitor their equipment. The owner, who was aware of how narrow a window you have to recover a machine, quickly opened up the Cellutrak smart phone application and located the Kubota machine in real time. This business owner used the integrated Google Maps satellite view feature to zoom in and pinpoint the machine’s location which was outside of a residence in Anjou, Quebec. As a concerned business man, he dispatched his closest team to ensure that the machine did not move locations until the police arrived on site. The Sûreté du Québec made their way to the residence in Anjou, where they recovered multiple machines belonging to different companies and made 1 arrest. Luckily for this construction company, their Kubota R520S was returned and available for operation on the same day.
According to the Toronto Construction Association, construction sites are easy targets for theft as thieves usually drive the machines right off the site in plain view. Installing a Cellutrak GPS tracking device has become essential to improving business efficiency in the construction industry.
To read the full theft story, please click here.
