Common keys may make it easier for thieves to drive away with farm and construction equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars, especially when obtaining the keys is little more than a few mouse clicks away.
Last week, searching the words “heavy equipment keys” on the popular internet auction website EBay turned up more than a dozen sellers claiming to offer them.
One individual was selling a ring of 39 keys for operating machinery made by an extensive list of major manufacturers, including Bobcat, Case, John Deere, International, as well as new and old Cat equipment.
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The winning bid was $46 US. The seller, from LaFayette, Louisiana, also offered volume discounts and was willing to ship anywhere in North and South America, as well as Asia, Australia and Germany.
John Schmeiser, executive vice-president of the Canada West Equipment Dealers Association, said he was not surprised to hear that common keys are readily available on the internet.
“When you have something common like that, a lot of people are going to end up with them,” he said.
He recalled that years ago the Avis car rental agency was forced to give up its practice of using common keys after thefts spiraled out of control.
“It would be nice if our manufacturers of farm equipment took the same path,” he said.
“But they have to have a desire to change the way that they do things. Certainly, a common key makes it easier for criminals.”
Barry Nelson, public relations manager for John Deere, said common keys have been standard on most tractors and off-road vehicles because farmers, dealers and heavy equipment contractors appreciate the convenience of using one key to start all tractors of a certain model.
“The reason we do that is because our customers really like that convenience, but we don’t really publicize it because we don’t want the general public to know,” he said.
However, he also said that “pretty much everyone in rural America and Canada” already knows about common keys.
As a former territory manager for the company, he used one key to get inside and inspect tractors on multiple dealership lots. Lawn and garden tractors, however, require a different key than the big machines.
“The whole industry uses common keys,” Nelson said.
“Deere has its own key and the competition has theirs. We do customer focus studies all the time and they like the common key system.”
He added that buyers of John Deere equipment should take measures to make it more difficult for thieves, such as locking machinery doors and disconnecting batteries.
Ryan Johnson, a public relations spokesperson for Bobcat in the United States, said since 2005 the company has offered after-market global tracking devices that dealers can install.
As well, the optional deluxe instrument panel on the company’s skid steer loaders works in addition to the ignition key to prevent theft. It requires the operator to enter a preset code before the machine will start.
Ryan Shepherd, an analyst with New York-based National Equipment Register, said the top three stolen brands of heavy equipment in the U.S. are Caterpillar, Bobcat and John Deere, followed by Kubota, Case and New Holland.
The register has an extensive database of serial numbers and other information that it makes available to law enforcement agencies that are tracking stolen equipment. Although it serves mainly the continental U.S., queries about stolen equipment from Canada occur from time to time, he said.
“If you have five or six different keys, you can probably start a lot of the equipment out there,” Shepherd said.
To fight this, he added, some manufacturers now offer keypad code entry devices as non-standard options or as an after-market device.
In Canada, the RCMP handles all reported thefts. However, Schmeiser said given the less-than-stellar record of law enforcement agencies in recovering stolen property in recent years, members of the equipment dealers association have considered developing their own database.
Until a consensus can be reached on how to go about such a process, the association has opted to list the details of stolen equipment reported by dealers on its website at www.cweda.ca.
“I’m not an expert, but I’ve been told that if there is a crime in progress, the police will respond differently than if a theft or a crime has already occurred,” Schmeiser said, which is why the new anti-theft GPS tracking devices have proven effective.
The devices give police immediate information on a missing machine’s whereabouts.
