The National Equipment Register, a division of ISO Crime Analytics, and the National Insurance Crime Bureau, recently released its national report on 2010 heavy-equipment theft. This year’s report continues to focus on what types of equipment are most likely to be stolen and recovered and where in the United States thefts and recoveries occur. The report’s objective is to help provide equipment owners, insurance companies, and law enforcement personnel with information that can be used to help allocate investigative resources and influence theft prevention efforts.

The report draws on data from the National Crime Information Center, the NICB, and NER to provide a comprehensive analysis of heavy-equipment theft during the year. In 2010, the NCIC received 13,374 theft reports. In descending order, the five states with the most incidents of heavy-equipment theft were Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina. Together, those five states accounted for 43 percent of total equipment theft. Rounding out the top 10 were California, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama and Ohio. The top 10 states accounted for 61 percent of all thefts.

In 2010, 19 percent of heavy equipment stolen was recovered.

“Recovering stolen equipment and identifying the rightful owners remains a challenge,” said Joe Wehrle, NICB president and CEO. “Improved equipment registration, theft reporting and law enforcement training have shown encouraging signs of success, and we’re confident the numbers will continue to improve.”

“It’s encouraging to see that the overall theft percentage has not increased in the last few years,” said David Shillingford, president of ISO Crime Analytics. “However, there’s still room for considerable improvement from all parties involved because the disruption and secondary effects for equipment owners, insurers and law enforcement are still significant.”

Headquartered in Des Plaines, Ill., NICB is the nation’s leading not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to preventing, detecting and defeating insurance fraud and vehicle theft through data analytics, investigations, training, legislative advocacy and public awareness. NICB is supported by nearly 1,100 property/casualty insurance companies and self-insured organizations.

NER, a division of Verisk’s ISO Crime Analytics unit, helps equipment owners manage equipment risks. Since 2001, NER has helped thousands of equipment owners and their insurers deter theft and has enabled law enforcement to recover millions of dollars of stolen equipment through HELPtech, a national equipment marking and registration program. In 2009, NER launched IRONcheck, a machine-history search for used-equipment buyers. For more information, visit www.NER.net.