Big iron thefts dominate headlines but loss of small items drives costs to contractors

That’s according to new research from fleet and equipment management company Samsara.

A new report from the firm, called State of Connected Operations: Quantifying the hidden cost of asset invisibility, estimated that organisations without asset tracking systems lose an average of US$13.2 million annually when both direct and indirect costs are taken into account.

While high-value plant theft tends to attract attention, the data suggests it is lower-cost, high-frequency losses that are driving the majority of costs.

According to the report, 72% of theft and loss costs are linked to smaller equipment such as tools, generators, sensors and components. These items are more easily misplaced or stolen and are often not subject to the same level of tracking or security as larger machines.

Some 71% of companies surveyed said they experience equipment theft at least once per quarter, while around a quarter of new equipment budgets are spent replacing lost or stolen items.

Among the most commonly stolen or list items are generators, power tools, pumps, air compressors, light towers, wood chippers, excavators, tracked loaders, MEWPs, tractors and cranes.

There are also secondary effects to theft and loss, including project delays, idle labour, emergency equipment hire and potential contractual penalties, all of which contribute to the share of overall financial losses.

More than three-quarters of respondents (77%) said missing equipment had caused a major operational delay in the past year.

Meanwhile, the survey found that employees spend more than 10 hours per week searching for missing equipment, while the average time to recover a lost or stolen asset is approximately 25 days.

More than half of organisations (54%) said they are unable to recover even half of their high-value equipment once it goes missing.

The findings were based on a survey of 1,500 executives across sectors including construction, transport, utilities and field services, spanning markets such as the US, UK, Germany and France.