Paint Scheme: Thieves Fail to Outsmart T3 with Paint

Bob Ross once said there are no mistakes in painting — but some San Antonio area thieves didn’t get the memo. 

“We had one of our sales representatives let us know that a generator had been stolen from a jobsite,” said Bill Rowe, general manager of EquipmentShare’s San Antonio branch. “We jumped on T3 and put in the asset number and got a location.”

While the customer filed a police report, Rowe put EquipmentShare’s stolen equipment process into motion. Within minutes, local police were on the way to the stolen generator’s last reported location. What they found when they arrived on the scene was not exactly a masterpiece.

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“The thieves were in the process of painting the unit to try and hide it,” Rowe said. “They were roller painting some sort of gray latex paint on there, and they tried to cover other parts with tape.”

The thieves also used spray paint to hide the EquipmentShare logo. But the paint job wasn’t fooling anyone. T3 made a positive identification of the unit an easy task.

“T3 had the serial number in the system already — and a picture of the serial number plate from our make-ready work order. It was all in there,” Rowe said. 

While the thieves’ painting skills were lacking, the response time from T3 and EquipmentShare San Antonio was a masterpiece of teamwork and technology. 

“We had a swap-out unit out to the jobsite in an hour — and we had the stolen asset recovered within two to three hours,” Rowe said. “It just shows how you can respond very quickly to a problem and recover very quickly, as well. T3 really allows for a rapid response.” 

‍T3’s telematics hardware made locating this asset easy, but it didn’t stop there. With T3 Fleet and T3 Work Orders, both the client and the San Antonio branch had all the information they needed to positively identify the asset for law enforcement — saving the client approximately $20,000. 

“That’s just T3 doing its thing,” Rowe said. 

Anti-Theft Advice from EquipmentShare:
Smaller, towable items such as generators are often stationary for long periods of time. In these cases, a hitch lock is a good choice for security. But you do have another option. 

“We coach our customers to put the unit on blocks and store the wheels in a locked location,” said Rowe. 

Get started with a tech-powered rental today. Or learn more about how T3 can protect your owned assets. 

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