Criminals are still targeting smaller construction plant for theft but equipment tracking specialist AMI Group is continuing to recover stolen machines, as highlighted by the company's latest recovery where a stolen Bomag BW120 roller was found in a transit van.

AMI's customer first found the roller had been stolen from their depot in Wakefield at 7.30am on a Saturday morning. Fortunately the roller had dual tracking protection and was fitted with both a wired-in tracking system and a battery operated tracking solution, so AMI's Monitoring Station could locate the position of the equipment and put the tracking system into an alarm state.

By utilising GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and RF (Radio Frequency) technology, AMI's tracking system found the stolen roller was 20 miles away in Bradford. An exact cell site location was established and an AMI finder was dispatched to the area in question.

The AMI finder arrived at the location just a few hours later and realised the RF signal was coming from inside a white Ford Transit van that was parked on the roadside in a residential area.

Once a positive signal was established, West Yorkshire Police came to recover the stolen equipment, at which point it became clear that the van was also stolen and was displaying fake number plates. The police recovered the van and the Bomag roller was successfully returned to AMI's customer.

Peter Stockton, operations director at AMI Group said: 'In the telematics market, a common issue is a loss of signal if plant equipment is placed inside vans, containers or moved to rural areas, but our tracking systems are super sensitive and detect the strongest network signal available.

'Thieves are also more likely to find and remove standard tracking devices on smaller equipment, but this recovery highlights the sheer effectiveness of our covert tracking systems in overcoming both of these potential difficulties.

'Despite the obstacles in our way, the stolen roller was successfully recovered just hours after being reported as stolen, ensuring that our customer avoided the expense and inconvenience of replacing stolen plant'

AMI's tracking systems are used in conjunction with AMI Nexis, the company's web-based portal through which customers can log-on to the system to not only use it as an anti-theft deterrent, but also as a fleet management solution. Customers can even immobilise equipment from their phone.