Bobcat stolen from Wallace St

[avacon.livejournal.com]

A Bobcat excavator/skid-loader (a medium-sized piece of construction equipment) was stolen from a construction site on Wallace St over the weekend. Given how large these are, hopefully someone saw something suspicious?


From: stealthconstruction1@comcast.net
Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 15:00:47 +0000 (UTC)

Our Bobcat got stolen this weekend from 75 Wallace and I was hoping that you could send out an email to anyone in the neighborhood that you may have an email address to. Hopefully someone saw something or heard something. Someone would have to drive it away and then put it on a trailer so it's not an easy thing to do without someone seeing/hearing something. It's a major loss for us the machine cost us just under $40k and there is no way to re-coop it so again any clues would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!

Robert Leal (President)
Stealth Construction Inc.
617-623-3300
www.StealthConstruction.net

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Edit: that this big piece of machinery was stolen sometime between this past Friday evening and this morning by 7:30. No one was working at the site over the weekend.

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

that's some impressive purloining.

I will leave jokes based on the company name to others, but I assure you I thought 'em.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I was going to say that my first thought was this: http://xkcd.com/325/

[squirrelitude]

Haha, thanks for pointing that out! (At first I thought you were referring to "Bobcat".)

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

Not to be harsh, but wouldn't most rational businesses have insurance against theft of a $40k machine?

[molyflogs.livejournal.com]

No doubt. I'm not trying to minimize this company's loss... that's a huge deal, and it's really unfortunate, but it seems like this is the exact situation insurance exists to mitigate!

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

I also thought the same thing.

I do hope they are able to recover it

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Not really. It's quite likely even you or I would be better off self-insuring for a $40k risk.

Self-insurance: x%/year risk of losing $y; keep $y in the bank and earn $y*[interest rate]/year on it until you need it.

Insurance: x%/year risk of losing $y; pay the insurance company $y * (x% + [insurance company's profit])/year.

For insurance to be worthwhile, either losing $y needs to be a disaster, or you need to be investing the $y in something you expect to pay off at better than [insurance company's profit] + [interest rate]. So for most people it's a good idea to insure your house, but it's only worth comprehensive car insurance if you can neither live without a car nor afford to replace it.

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

If they self-insured, more power to them. They then made a conscious decision to accept any losses they might incur. Theft may not be a big issue in the heavy equipment industry ("Okay, we stole bulldozer...what do with do with it now?")...but that would usually mean decent rates.

I'll admit I come from an insurance industry family (and I've seen some weird claims in my day), but I have a hard time thinking about a business with expensive equipment that isn't insured from theft.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Isn't "expensive" the key word there? "Expensive enough to insure" = "too expensive to self-insure" = "costs more to replace than you can reasonably save up in time", where "reasonably" and "in time" have a lot to do with the particular business.

If it's your only Bobcat, you do a lot of Bobcat business, and Bobcats are hard to rent, insure your Bobcat. If you've got 10, maybe don't bother.

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

If the business is having to borrow money to pay for this (which most capital intensive businesses do), I would expect the lender to insist on insurance. But, I know little about construction business...

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Sure, fair enough. Just kicking back against the idea that insurance is necessarily a good idea, given that on average it's not the buyers that profit.

[somervilleguy.livejournal.com]

We have LoJack on ours. Well worth the investment particularly if you leave them on public streets for the weekend.

[mamabunny72.livejournal.com]

Neighbors have been able to narrow down the time period as Sunday, sometime between 9:30AM-11:00AM.
One neighbor recalls seeing a flatbed truck with the Bobcat and at least three men. Unfortunately, it didn't look suspicious at the time, but now, we know that the contractors and subcontractors were not working this past weekend.