Australian backhoe buyer discovers pistol, bullets

When the Australian buyer of a second-hand Caterpillar 432D backhoe shipped from Britain, took it into his local Cat dealer to have it fitted it with airconditioning, he threw his dealer into a bit of a tizz.

Because when the dealer removed the dashboard to fit the aircon, he found a 9mm pistol and a box of bullets.New South Wales Police sent the find to the Cambridgeshire Police, the area from where the backhoe had been shipped.

According to Britain's National Plant and Equipment Register, TER, this was just the tip of the stolen equipment iceberg. More recently it discovered two JCB excavators worth $90,000 and two John Deere tractors worth $256,000 which had been stolen in Britain and shipped to Australia.

The register believes these are just a small sample of stolen British equipment which ends up in Australia and it wants the Commonwealth Government to step up inspections of imported construction and farm equipment. “We say in the UK that the recovery rate of stolen equipment is about 5% so we are just touching the tip of the iceberg,” register manager Tim Purbrick said. “So there could be a heck of a lot of stolen gear in Australia. Australian Customs would help fight the international trade in stolen plant, by carrying out more inspections and recording all ID numbers, on imported machines.”

But in the case of the John Deere tractors mentioned above, it was the second time they had been intercepted by police. In Britain police impounded them in a garage. But the thieves returned at night, stole them back and shipped them to Australia anyway.

Purbrick said, “We think they were probably always going to Australia and the mere fact the police recovered them, was only a blip in their operation,” he said.

He added that thieves face little risk of being caught, largely because most of them operate at night. They then change the identity numbers and trade them in through unwitting dealers or sell them through auction houses.

At a Ritchie Bros auction in Holland, a dealer and regular TER checker who wasviewing the auction, contacted TER about the identity of a JCB 532 telescopic handler.When this machine was confirmed as stolen, Ritchie Bros immediately declared other machines– a Cat TH62 telehandler, a Cat TH63 telehandler, and a Takeuchi TB175 excavatorentered by the same `seller', and a further JCB 3CX backhoe which RB was unhappy with - not for sale and all five machines were subsequently identified as stolen from the UK and Turkey. All had had their identities changed with new (fake) serial numbers and engine plates, as well as being re-stamped with false identities.