CROSSHIRE SCOURGE OF SCRAP THEFT


It is pleasing to report that many hire outfits are having a good run of business and, judging from some of the comments that I have heard recently, our industry appears to be moving in the right direction. I know that some of you are recruiting to strengthen teams depleted by the economic downturn, and both utilisation and hire rates are definitely on the up.


Against this positive news come reports of criminal activities that are having an effect on many of us, and it appears that little action is being taken to eliminate this scourge. I refer to the increasingly popular crime of valuable metal accessories or components being stolen just for their scrap value. This crime is becoming widespread as scrap prices increase. A typical and, unfortunately, easy target is the spare buckets supplied with all classes of excavator. Our customers often leave these lying around sites or at the side of road jobs, and it only takes a minute for a couple of strong lads to throw them onto the back of a pickup truck. I have even heard of cases where these characters, wearing hi-viz vests and all the right gear, cheerfully declare to anyone that they are from the hire company and working to instructions, even to the extent of asking where any other buckets are located!


This activity extends to removing any easily de-mounted equipment, such as rock breakers and, of course, any aluminium access components that are lying around are a real bonus. We are theoretically able to recover the cost of such crime under our contract terms, but we all know what a lot of heartache and wrangling takes place as customers attempt to wriggle out of paying compensation charges. At best we often have to compromise and take a partial loss for the sake of goodwill, while a set of buckets costing many hundreds of pounds is flogged for scrap at a fraction of their worth. In fairness, the police in some areas are trying their best to intercept this type of crime, mainly due to pressure from local councils who have had hundreds of roadside drain covers and similar ironwork stolen.


There is, in my opinion, a much quicker and effective way of stopping this activity, but it requires the authority of legislation. At the moment, many metal dealers will take loads of scrap containing obviously usable items without any question. Although details of the untaxed, uninsured pickup trucks running on red diesel are recorded, there is little or no checking done into the real identity of the particular Mr Smith


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who is driving. This is a bad situation that could be prevented to a great degree by one simple new rule. A real breakthrough would come if there was a regulation preventing payouts in cash. Payment by cheque would stop a lot of this activity in its tracks as an audit trail would exist for the police and Inland Revenue to follow. A legitimate scrap collector, with a proper business and bank accounts, would have nothing to fear, but the cash lifeline that our assets represent to the low life who are robbing us would be severed. Now, that really would dampen their chips!


A recent purge on vehicles going in and out of scrap yards in one area of the country resulted in stolen scrap being recovered, with most of the vehicles being impounded for other offences. The legitimate scrap metal industry has a trade association; our industry has two, most of us are members and some of us are getting fed up with the chest puffing schemes that they come up with to justify taking our membership fees. How about our trade bodies asking the scrap men if they will stop paying out in cash? If they get the answer that I suspect they will, can they, please, lobby the useless, pathetic and unwashed at Westminster on our behalf to change the law?


Metal theft affects a lot of us directly. I would bet a few shillings that most of us lose a sum at least the equivalent of our annual trade association membership every year to this type of theft. Now, I wonder what economy we might make to compensate us for this loss? Answers on a postcard please.


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