Sawmill Security away from home

[WV Sawmiller]

    I mostly do mobile sawing and am paranoid about someone stealing my mill while I leave it on site overnight and sometimes for days at a time. To be honest most of the places I saw are very secure but I still worry.

    Yesterday I went to move my mill here at home and I could not unlock the hitch lock. You know the yellow locks you see in the trailer accessories departments that look like a ball hitch with a big C-clamp that slides down over the hitch preventing removal? I have used one ever since I got my mill but yesterday I could not unlock it. It was either frozen or had some crud inside preventing the key going all the way. There was a little slack in it so I thought maybe I could slide it out using the bar from my landing gears. Instead, with amazingly little force, the pot metal just broke. I'm convinced anyone with a large screwdriver could have popped it free. It provides a false sense of security.

   Anyway, tonight I left the mill on site with just a padlock through the hitch lever so they have to cut the lock to lift the lever and put it on the ball on their truck. I also loaded a good sized log on the mill and moved the head back off the hydraulics power strip. My mill has live hydraulics any time there is contact rather than going through the switch like other models. I think I will do that in the future and help annoy any would-be thieves who happen by.

   I have read of others who remove and take the hitch home with them. Other suggestions are welcome.

[Southside]

Bouncing Betty?  :D I am actually more concerned when I stop at a store and have a $900 saw in the bed of the truck over the mill being messed with.

[Magicman]

I will sometimes put a padlock through the hitch but not because I particularly feel that it is necessary.  The saw head is at the hitch end so someone would have a very difficult time moving it.

Other than someone swiping my tape measure once, nothing has ever been tampered with.

[Resonator]

Some suggestions: Park heavy machinery /objects in front of the hitch at end of day. Construction companies often put an excavator in front and /or behind the doors of their tool trailer to deter thieves. Put a remote wild game camera nearby to provide some security. Permanently mark your equipment /record serial numbers in case it is stolen it can be recovered. You could always disguise it too, I remember seeing a picture on here of a mill covered in tarps and a garbage can, looked like a dinosaur. ;D
Good Luck!

[starmac]

Well iffen a guy thinks he might lose some sleep over it, just make sure it is insured and sleep like a baby.

[Stuart Caruk]

Trust me, locks are a waste of time. My 12 year old daughter can pick most Master Padlocks in under 10 seconds, a skilled crook might take 3 or 4 seconds. Personally, I'd use my Dewalt 20 VDC battery powered grinder with a 1/16" thick cutoff wheel. It goes through any lock or chain in seconds. ( Just ask the guys who replace my locks and park their RV's on private property)...

Best advice is insurance, or park heavy equipment on both ends, or chain a mean hungry dog to the hitch.

The reality of it is that anyone who is willing to risk serving time in prison for stealing a mill, isn't likely to let a little lock slow them down. It's a sad world we live in sometimes.

[Ianab]

While it's not a foolproof solution, things like locks and wheel clamps DO make something "harder" to steal. This may deter some of the more opportunistic thieves, and it looks better on the police report / insurance claim. Like if someone breaks into my shed, they have to bust or cut a lock to do it. It's not a big or expensive lock, but it would take some tools to force it, which makes it's a "breaking and entering" to the police. If you have taken some "reasonable precaution" to secure the property, but someone has taken a battery angle grinder to the lock, it sits better with the insurance company than if they just backed up, hooked on and drove away. (or stole the tools from an unlocked shed)

And a lot of insurance policies may not cover things that are left "unsecured". Once the thief has cut a lock, that proves it was "secured", at least to some extent.

There are also gps / cellular devices that you can fit to anything. Unless the thief recognises and disables it, your cell phone will report the current location, or last known one if it's now in a tin shed. And that's enough for the cops to get a warrant to look for it. I'm thinking you could stash that in the control box with all the other wires and control boards. Only a WM tech would spot it wasn't a factory install.

A lot of new industrial machinery has that built in to the ECU now, and several stolen excavators and skid steers have been recovered locally by the owner logging into the manufacturers web page and using the "find my machine" function.

[square1]

Tire boots, like the police use to immobilize vehicles, are now commercially available.
https://www.google.com/search?q=tire+boot&source=lnms&tbm=shop&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJlLOas_rYAhWCoFMKHQcMAjEQ_AUICigB&biw=1624&bih=966

[Kbeitz]

Phone tracker...

http://blog.dailylifetech.com/trackr/d/entry/tiny-device-allows-you-to-track-your-car-using-your-smartphone-1211?engsec=60

[Chuck White]

Some suggestions: Park heavy machinery /objects in front of the hitch at end of day. Construction companies often put an excavator in front and /or behind the doors of their tool trailer to deter thieves. Put a remote wild game camera nearby to provide some security. Permanently mark your equipment /record serial numbers in case it is stolen it can be recovered. You could always disguise it too, I remember seeing a picture on here of a mill covered in tarps and a garbage can, looked like a dinosaur. ;D
Good Luck! 

I believe that might be MagicMans mill with all of it's covers on it!

Lynn; You said that you leave the sawhead at the front of the mill, and leaves me wondering how you disable the hydraulics so they can't be moved!

[Magicman]

Chuck, the SuperHydraulic has a solenoid that disables the hydraulics when the key is off/removed.

[Resonator]

A day cutting wood page 4 Reply#75 sawmill dinosaur pic. ;D

[PA_Walnut]

Locks deter novice thieves, insurance covers from pro thieves.

Note: I have those TrackR devices. They are kinda cool but require BlueTooth, not cellular. If you are in the boonies they have little value as they require someone else within proximity of the device to also have the TrackR service and BlueTooth. They have a map online that, when entering a zip code, will shot you other registered users in the vicinity.

[firefighter ontheside]

Sadly, tongue locks really just keep the honest people honest.  You can do things to make it more difficult for someone to steal.  I'm not sure how your trailer is, but there are removable tongue jacks.  You could remove the crank handle.  When there is significant tongue weight, most crooks probably won't be able to lift the tongue and set it down on their hitch.

My fifth wheel camper is totally unsecured, but I take solace in the fact that most crooks don't have a nice truck, nor a fifth wheel hitch to be able to hook up to it.

[WV Sawmiller]

FFOTHS,

   Thanks. That's what I call the "Sticky Note" approach - simple, cheap and effective. I have not added a trailer jack but I do have all 6 landing gear under tension. If I remove or hide the bar it makes it real hard to release the tension (especially since I left a 1,000 lb log on the bed). If it wasn't chrome I could paint it black so nobody would likely see it in it's holster on the landing gear or I could paint it WM orange and hide elsewhere on the mill. Simple fix is take it with me.

    I am not interested in the insurance option as I already checked inland marine policies and felt the price for coverage was excessive so only keep liability insurance. I can cover the damage or replacement in a worse case scenario.

   I know I'm likely being anal retentive worrying. Where my mill is right now is in a field at the end of a dead end road across from the customers house being watched over by him and his 2 donkeys. The donkeys bray every time I drive past. Maybe I should buy and tie a donkey to the mill when I leave it. :D

[Southside]

You paint that rod black and loose it and you will be the one trying to figure out how to get your mill out of there!!!  I dropped mine once at night and was in a pretty good scramble mode trying to find that thing knowing it was going to be a fun time getting her moved!! 

[KirkD]

Phone tracker...

http://blog.dailylifetech.com/trackr/d/entry/tiny-device-allows-you-to-track-your-car-using-your-smartphone-1211?engsec=60

From what I understand these are Bluetooth and not GPS so you have to be 15 to 30' from it. Most of us with our glasses on would see our mill by then.
They have them on Amazon also and only manage to gather a 3 start rating.

[firefighter ontheside]

I understand that llamas are pretty good guard animals.

[4x4American]

A lock on the hitch isn't gonna do anything. All they have to do is come with a 1-7/16" ball/pintle combo and the small ball will slid right into the hitch and then they close the pintle hook latch over it to keep it down and off they go.  What I did for a lock was take a ball with the nut welded to the bottom of the threads so they can't get onto it and close the latch and lock it with one of those brolic masterlocks that has the extra thick reinforcements over it so you can't break it with bolt cutters at least not easily.  Well once I had trouble with the locks seizing I just started unbolting the hitch and bringing it home with me. 

[Bandmill Bandit]

Those blue tooth things work well for keeping track of my wifes keys and that is about the extent of them.

I had one job/incident where I was sawing out in the bush on the landing. When I cam in one morning there was a guy backed up to the mill trying to push the head back so he good get to the front jack to lift the mill. I grabbed my shot gun from behind the seat and laid it across my lap with barrel out the window (security) and drove up and asked if he needed a hand. His back was to me when I stopped and when he turned around to answer he had a the gun barrel about even with his chest about 6 feet away.

Lets just say he didn't hang around long. I did get a clear picture of the back of the truck that I sent to an RCMP friend along with the GPS coordinates where I took the picture. I finished the job on that landing about 2 pm that day and when I was heading down the lease road to another landing I noticed the pick up parked on the approach  into the landing I was heading to and a Logging truck with picker loading logs. That log truck did not belong to the guy I was sawing for so I called the RCMP friend and told him. He was about a mile away when I called on his way in with the forestry officer checking out my and a few other reports of unusual equipment in the area when I called. Turned out it was a pretty significant operation of logs and equipment theft.   

I was lucky that it was all kinda happenstance and I didn't get hurt.

Ever since then my hitch comes off when I set up my mill and goes home with me every night.     

           

[dgdrls]

short of Insurance a trail cam is a great idea,
IMHO the key is to make it as difficult as possible to easily hitch up and pull away.
block it in, pull the hitch off and if you can pull a wheel or both or more.
You have to make it more trouble than most dishonest people will work for.

D

[Chuck White]

As Dan said, trailcams are a good idea!

I would suggest putting a trailcam "sorta" in-sight, watching the mill, almost hidden so the potential thief will likely notice it and probably remove the chip from it, BUT then have another trailcam out of sight, watching the mill and the first cam!   ;)

[Larry]

I fabricated a hitch receiver on the mill itself.  The mill hitch plugs into the receiver and is held tight by a draw pin.  Same as the draw bar on the truck.  Takes 10 seconds to pull the pin and remove the hitch.

Second defense is a cable lock that threads through the hole on one of the spoked wheels. After 15 minutes of sawing its buried in the dust and won't be noticed.  Not for sure what would happen if somebody is pulling the mill down the road with one wheel locked....might catch it on fire.  Hope I don't ever forget to take it off.

[Resonator]

Reply #19 reminds me of a sign on my friends hunting cabin which reads: "WARNING if you can read this, your in range!", written above a rifle target.

[pine]

I have more concern over vandalism of the mill than I do actual theft of the mill. 
Stealing it is more difficult than some punk doing damage to the mill. 
People just don't respect other folk's property anymore.