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By Greg Bartlett

Theft happens. Anyone who’s ever managed a job site knows that this is the case, whether it’s from bystanders sneaking on site and stealing power tools, or more brazen cases of equipment theft – stealing trucks, or even full supply containers of building or electrical supplies.

One of the more brazen cases of on the job theft (and eventual recovery) happened to KHC Contracting out in Kandahar, where a group of Afghan construction workers palmed a set of keys to a 30 ton backhoe and drove it off site at 4 AM. They’d had the chance to study the placement of security teams while working the site, and it was a coordinated affair involving most of a tribal clan to try to pull off.

They waited until the weather reports were calling for a dust storm, which would encourage the security personnel to stay inside rather than meander out into it, and it was, by all later accounts, a rather coordinated affair. (The widely held perception that the Afghans consider anything that they can pry up off the ground as fair game is, well, not too far from the truth.) Where you hide a 30 ton piece of heavy equipment, in a town of wattle and daub huts with thatched roofs is a matter of much curiosity.

What foiled their plot is that KHC had installed a GPS tracking system on all of their heavy equipment; this was, in large part, tied to a secure perimeter warning; crossing a certain set of coordinates would set off an alarm inside the cabin of the machine, warning that they might be driving it into an unsecured (read: Potentially hazardous) area.

These GPS systems were tied to the ignition being turned. The Afghans conducting the theft unplugged the speaker on the internal alarm, but when the engine turned over, the GPS tracking system sent its report to the central computer network on the base…and then updated its position as it went down the road, using the cell phone towers that KHC had put into place to bring cell phone service to the locals. By 7 AM a security team was following the tracks of the backhoe into a cave; the local tribal chieftain denied all knowledge of the operation, claiming it was a stunt pulled by some of the more overly adventurous members of the clan. KHC made a point of locking up all of the heavy equipment in a secure shelter after that incident.