hiding your copper

[reppy007]

This is intendend for you trouble man,either a 1 man or 2-man truck......isnt it a pain in the you know what..........having to hide,or lock up that#4 stranded and so on..........placing it into a bin and constantly moving it back and forth........the days of having it on a reel or rolled up in the well is fading away...............when some customers wave at your truck as you pass by ........they arent being friendly.........maybe they just need a meal or two,maybe some beer..........or maybe some crack................soon they will be taking the alumin...........where are we going to find all that room?

[aviewfrom]

Sorta related... Last year there was a telecom contractor running a new fiber line to a cell tower location and had left a whole roll of messenger wire sitting along side the street. It sat there for months after they pulled out then one day it was gone. They were an out of state outfit and I doubt they came back for it.

[rob8210]

The other day we had a couple hundred feet of guy steel laying out in a ROW, we had used it to tow a truck out, some guy wanted to take it for scrap.

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

This is intendend for you trouble man,either a 1 man or 2-man truck......isnt it a pain in the you know what..........having to hide,or lock up that#4 stranded and so on..........placing it into a bin and constantly moving it back and forth?

Is trouble man copper more desirable than anyone else's? How many trouble trucks that you know of are left out over night?

[reppy007]

Is trouble man copper more desirable than anyone else's? How many trouble trucks that you know of are left out over night?

copper is copper........when a trouble man is in the backyard,it creates a good chance to have a free for all for somebody with sticky hands...........and some guys do bring the trucks home............I guess most copper is taken right from the yard..........Ive seen that happen.........there was one instance where there was a RV rental place next to the yard.......the guys cut the fence between the two properties...........found a wheel-barrel and went to town..................got all the trucks in the yard.................but you might not be surprised to find out that it was the prisident of the companys son that was involved.............this guy couldnt even become a lineman cause he failed his drug test...........but he still works there and his job is safe.............he is the prisidents son.

[Pootnaigle]

Ummmmmmm back inna day I werked wiffa ole serviceman that hadda 5 gal. bucket inna back of hiz service truck. We required 18" outta a new weatherhead n he cut alla rest out n throwed it inna bucket. Sumtimes it wud amount to quite a bit but ever week he wud make a pass by hiz house n dump it into a 50 gal drum n sell it off once or twice a year.
I never dun that but lookin back I shudda.That stuff mounts up quick.

[RadonHuffer]

ground loops between transformers and such, When they finally figured it the sheriff found 1700 pounds worth of copper in his garage.

The took his hooks as burglar tools.

[rob8210]

I have a couple of stories. First, we were working on a main street last fall and had the rbd parked around the corner on a side street. Some fella bold as life stopped his car, jumped out up onto the rbd and stole a hand coil of #2 copper. I wouldn't have known except a private citizen stopped me and told me all about it. He even had the guys licence number. The kicker was I couldn't get the cops to even show up, it took 2 days and then they just went to the office. The second one happened when I worked as a rentalman to a local utility. I was at a satellite yard that happened to have a hole cut in the yard fence. Before they got it fixed a fella came in and helped himself, even left a trail to where he had parked. That next day he was taking his load to the scrapyard when he got stopped by the cops and readily admitted to stealing it. I kept saying he should clean up the mess he left, but guess what, I did.

[aviewfrom]

I miss the time when I was doing telecom work at cell towers. We collected so much scrap #2 stranded and 4/0 battery cable from new equipment installation. Not to mention all the wire from decom work. A years work gained enough scrap to fill a fill size truck bed. I scraped it when copper/metal theft was already bad enough in Indiana that most yards had a cop on property to watch for thieves. Needless to say I was a bit nervous pulling up in my personal truck with all that wire.

[reppy007]

now days anything that will sell is being stolen...........Lately in these parts,the local Walmarts are getting hit hard..............without the greeters watching the doors its x-mas in march for some.............2 days ago these young women tried to take 4 carts of baby formula.............full carts....21 dollars a small box...............in all they had over 3 thousand dollars in the carts......they didnt get those carts...........but they did get carts the weeks before...............Now when you die.............and somebody buys your grave a bronze vase...........the theieves are taking them also................thats really low going into a grave yard and stealing from a dead person............I knew a guy that was a contractor............he would order out coils of # 2 copper from the utility............the utility warehouseman and he would joke............smile a little............and say their goodbyes..........he needed that copper for his home................cause it surely wasnt for the jobs we were working on.

[Priormilitary]

I work in Baltimore, and the theft of copper is out of control. Im sure it is the same way in a lot of major metropolitan urban cities, but it is absolutely ridiculous here. The locals will steal your copper as soon as your out of sight of your truck. When we work by ourselves, we have to take 2 sets of keys and when we are up in the air, we have to lock the cab of the truck and take the spare set of keys up in the air with us so we can get back in. This is a result of thieves cutting the truck off while your airborne, and robbing you blind while you are stuck aloft in the bucket with no power!! Lol. We have also had a major issue with the thieves cutting down open wire copper bus and stealing it. They are quite slick, and will cut down a service feeding a business, usually on the weekend or after hours when the business is closed. By the time the customer realizes they have no power, we respond to check the cause, and find that the service has been cut clear and stolen... sometimes for several sections. In addition, I had a guy electrocute himself stealing 1/0 copper ground wire from a customer sub. That was the second such case that year. I happened to be switching on the same feeder and was on location about 90 seconds after getting the call. This guy was jacked up in a bad way, and went into cardiac arrest while I was there. I dont know whether he lived or died but that was the last I ever saw of him. Supervisor met me on site for pics and report and I never heard a thing about it again. Im sure there are thieves everywhere. Like they say, "locks only keep the honest people out."

[reppy007]

I dont know about some people.......the new thing is now tide.........people will steal tide just to sell it.........on the bright side everyone will have clean clothes .

[LostArt]

Stealing Tide??? :confused: Wow. That's got to be a new wave.

[duckhunter]

Several utilities in MI are installing GPS trakers in Reels of copper and tracking the theifs. Working real well. The scrap yards in our area don't take a chance, the sherriff dept. is there a few times every week year round.

[Hebrew]

Yes it is!!Tired of it but prefer to lock up than to answer stupid questions!

[URDesignerCub]

Seems like every couple months...

GLENDALE, AZ (AP) - Posted: Mar 28, 2013
A man found next to a transformer at a vacant Glendale business with burns over his entire body has died, authorities said. Glendale police said 57-year-old Gregory Johnson died Thursday at a hospital. They said Johnson was found Thursday in a commercial yard near 51st Avenue and Bethany Home Road. Police believe he may have been trying to steal copper wiring from the transformer and was electrocuted.
------

Today I drove by a temp feed between two transformers that ran across a parking lot, and at each transformer (about 100yds apart) there was a security guard in the shade in a lawn chair. I'm assuming they were there to ensure safety at the transformer, and not so much for theft prevention. But you have to wonder if they're still there at 3am.

[reppy007]

We would do that sometimes if there was an outstanding fault.Run a temp.URD primary bypass from transformer to transformer overnight until the next day when contractors would be called......they would get a lineman to sit with it all night....usually it was in the backyards....so he would be in the front inside of a truck.....guarding:D.....I never did that personally,easy double time....if you like sitting there alone for hours and hours.

[URDesignerCub]

We would do that sometimes if there was an outstanding fault.Run a temp.URD primary bypass from transformer to transformer overnight until the next day when contractors would be called......they would get a lineman to sit with it all night....usually it was in the backyards....so he would be in the front inside of a truck.....guarding:D.....I never did that personally,easy double time....if you like sitting there alone for hours and hours.

I'm picturing some crazy SOB in a pickup truck at 3am tonight, pulling up and tieing a big rope to that cable in the middle where it crosses the road....and then hauling ass down the road with rope, cable, elbows, 1/2-a-bushing, and snow-fence all dragging behind! :eek:

*******s will try/steal anything here!