Skyjack telematics tracks stolen equipment

Skyjack recently helped Wellington County Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), in Canada, to locate and recover stolen Skyjack machines with the help of its Elevate telematics system.

In October, customers in the US informed Skyjack that their scheduled machine orders never arrived. The OPP had already opened an investigation of a load theft carrying Skyjacks that a trucking business in Guelph reported to them. Skyjack immediately activated ELEVATE telematics on the missing machines to provide real time movement and activity to police.

“Elevate played a significant role in this success story,” says Mike Sheremeta, telematics business development associate at Skyjack. “The sophisticated backend capabilities allowed us to easily track movement of the stolen machines proving that beyond Elevate’s primary cost-saving benefits to customers, it’s also a very effective theft recovery tool. We were able to watch the movement of these machines online while they were hundreds of kilometers away from us.”

Elevate provides critical alerts and various actionable insights into machine operation that help rental companies save money and time. It’s available as an option on all Skyjack machines allowing customers access to information like battery health status, CAN data, alerts, and true utilization through analysis of lifting, driving, load, and run time.

“As we continue to evolve the Elevate platform with additional features and functionality, it’s equally rewarding to see how the basic function of Elevate is protecting customer assets,” says Kurt Atchison, director of product management at Skyjack. “Elevate not only helps our customers improve operational efficiency, saving time and money, it also helps protect their investment from theft.”

Police said a fraudulent company out of Quebec, used a stolen trailer to commit the thefts. With Elevate as a prime aid, police recovered the majority of equipment. This isn’t the first time that Elevate helped find stolen machines. Skyjack says customers frequently use it to aid in recovery of their stolen machines all over the world.

The matter is still under investigation.