Looking for a truly multi-purpose piece of heavy equipment for your next project? The loader backhoe, a melding of tractor, excavator and loader, is considered by some to be the Swiss army knife of heavy equipment. It can dig, back-fill, handle material and, with the right attachments, carry out even more tasks. Loader backhoes are compact and versatile enough for everything from construction and demolition to landscaping and road building.

Easy pickings and a smooth disposal process. High profits. Worldwide, clandestine markets. It sounds like a pitch for joining a drug cartel, but these are some of the reasons heavy machinery is frequently stolen by small-time thieves as well as more sophisticated crime operations.

Equipment is stolen for the simple reason that the reward for the thief is greater than the risk taken. Small pieces like tractors are easily boosted, and heavy equipment has little security, either on the piece itself or in the place it's parked. There's also the time lapse: when a car is stolen, it's realized within hours or even minutes of the theft. When a dozer is parked on a Friday night, it's idle for the weekend. Its disappearance may not be discovered for days or even weeks, creating a big window of time for its disposal.

Since 2001, The National Equipment Register (NER) and National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has published an annual report on equipment theft in the United States. The findings are based primarily on data the NICB drew from the National Crime Information Center’s (NCIC) database of more than 10,000 construction and farm equipment thefts, and information reported to ISO ClaimSearch.® We've condensed some of the information in the following infographic, but you can download the complete report by going to this website - it's concise and well laid-out.

Finning’s Spencer Smirl discusses the daily disciplines that protect your equipment investment.

By Jeff Howard for IronPlanet

It may seem early in the season, but as hearty Canadians head into the challenging winter season ahead, they’ll be looking to fine tune equipment fleets. On Wednesday, September 21, Edmonton will welcome IronPlanet’s 1.5 million registered bidders to an online only auction. Register to bid and check out more than 500 items online or at our Acheson, Alberta yard today!

The Canadian Farmer’s Almanac predicts “downright frigid” winter weather over parts of the Rockies, Prairies, Great Lakes, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. What else is new?

But for Canadian equipment owners, the Almanac’s August forecast means it’s time to prepare for that winter state of mind. To get a few heavy equipment winter operation reminders, we turned to Spencer Smirl, (pictured above on the right), Finning Canada’s fleet manager for the Site C Clean Energy project near Fort St. John, B.C.

Why Spencer? Well, he just happens to be Canada’s foremost cold weather equipment specialist, a reputation that’s well earned. Over the last five years, he’s kept machines going at both Poles — as a heavy duty mechanic at Finning’s Ekati operation near the Arctic Circle and during “The Coldest Journey”, the first ever attempt to cross the Antarctic in winter. As the lead mechanic for the expedition, Spencer successfully kept two D6Ns chugging in temperatures that reached minus-100 Celsius (that’s minus-148 Fahrenheit for you “southerners”).

Understandable that Labor Day is IronPlanet's favorite holiday. But while the staff strings colored lights on a forklift while singing "Gramma Got Run Over By a John Deere" and buys gifts at this week's auction, a whole subsection of people are celebrating Labor Day in a spectacular - some might say insane - way.

At this very moment about 70,000 artists, builders, and innovators are making their way to the bolt of sun and hardpan that is Black Rock Playa in Nevada. Burning Man, the annual art laboratory and pop-up metropolis that will completely ghost by this time next week, is taking place as we speak.

Cities don't just happen no matter how fabulous the art is, and that's where Stinky Pirate, Chaos, and the Heavy Machinery camp comes in. Situated right on the main drag, it's a working crew and a theme camp with reach forks, boom lifts, and skid steers; the flame throwers are purely for atmoshpere. 

Here's a great story about Rick Rea, the "mechanical Confucius of the desert" (insert Kung Fu-style bamboo flute sound) who goes to Burning Man every year to make sure the heavy equipment from United Rentals runs smoothly in the harsh, gritty playa. His understanding of machines and their "fixes" is almost mystical. Ether, for example. That's all I'm sayin'.