Sign of the times

Picked up my TM where it had been sitting in an open lot for repairs. The Bargman connector and several feel of primary wire were missing. Our local trailer shop says they are doing a good business in replacing Bargmans - depending on how long the stretch of cable that was cut is, a thief gets about 30 cents for each connector they net. They sell them for copper content. Fortunately I had a lock through one of the latches so they couldn't get in and steal any of the contents. There's a moral here somewhere - I'm just not sure what it is. - camp2canoe

[ShrimpBurrito]

Wow, that is truly surprising. And here I though stealing catalytic converters and copper wire from street lights was a little over the top.

I think the moral here is, attach a 120VAC source to the bargeman to give would-be thieves a little surprise. Of course, then they'd probably sue you.

Dave

Originally Posted by ShrimpBurrito

Wow, that is truly surprising. And here I though stealing catalytic converters and copper wire from street lights was a little over the top.

I think the moral here is, attach a 120VAC source to the bargeman to give would-be thieves a little surprise. Of course, then they'd probably sue you.

Dave

I have a neon sign transformer that puts out about 18,000 volts. That would get their attention. They only would have to get their hand within 2 or 3 inches to generate a spark.

I have seen alum flashing cut off the roof edge of buildings. I also had a building broken into by breaking through a brick wall and all the copper pipes in the basement were cut out! How about stealing the spare tire hanging under the back of a pickup.

Koz

This has been going on for a long time. About 35 years ago, I worked for a plastics packaging company in WI. They had some extruders with large 300 HP motors. The power cabling was really heavy gauge - the copper wire was about 1/2" thick. We kept a big reel of the cable in inventory for repair work. An audit revealed there was about 250' of cable missing. They started to monitor the situation quietly. Turns out one of the electricians would go into the storage room every day at lunch, cut off about a 9" length of this cable, and hide it in his lunch box to take home and sell as scrap. This was a 20-year man with a good paying union job, and he lost that job and his reputation over that stupid theft. I think they calculated he made $200 on the copper. Stupid.

A woman died last week in the heat wave because someone had stolen her air conditioner and she was trying to keep cool with a fan.

Pathetic losers...

[Keith Wire]

They stole an air conditioner from a local church last week. Kathy said "The're going to need it where they are going..."

Keith

[hillbillyhotel]

this is a new one, is for around here, thief went to local little league field and unbolted all of the alum. off the bleachers, now that a low life, jmo. hopes he get a seat beside the one that stole the ac from the church

[scrubjaysnest]

Hope that was discovered before some one sat on the loose benches and got hurt.

[T and C]

About 10 years ago I was teaching at a middle school. At the time the big newsmaker for politicians was to get schools connected to the internet. So someone comes up with a federal grant, (your tax money at work ), to connect our school.

The school is quite large, so they had to connect several buildings with cables going from rooftop to rooftop, all coming from a central location. It worked for the week they installed it. However, on Monday morning when we got to school all the cables were gone! The druggies had simply thrown ropes over them an hauled on them until they broke.

Next, they dug up the school and put in underground cables. At the first rain the system went down due to water intrusion into the channels. Never worked well after that. (More of your tax money at work )

The next, and final fix, was to put in fiber optic wiring. No reason to steal it, and it was more resistant to water intrusion. Never had another problem.

Finally

Tom