Episode 038: Protecting Your Fleet From Catalytic Converter Theft

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All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. Glad to have you here with us. As always, I'm your host, Josh Turley, joined today again by Steve Saltzgiver.

It's good to be back. Been gone for a while.

Yeah, and, uh, Jeff Jenkins.

Hey, happy New Year again, everybody, right? Welcome, welcome 2022.

That's right, I haven't been here since last year.

That's right, it's been so long since we've seen you.

Hey, should we take a poll? 2022, better or worse than '21?

It's gonna be better. It's already better for me.

Perfect. Look at the optimism in the room.

It's gonna be better.

We're gonna kick ass in '22.

That's right. Uh, all right, well, hey, today we're going to get right into a fun, fun topic. Very timely, it seems. I've seen a lot of posts about this one on NAAFA, uh, on LinkedIn. I've been seeing a lot about this. This is hitting a lot of fleets all over. Catalytic converters and their sudden shyness and how they just go missing from the scene.

Yeah, so for the people that don't know what a catalytic converter is, does anybody want to take it?

I don't think anybody that's in fleet doesn't know what a catalytic converter is, but we sometimes have non-fleet people that listen in.

Okay, take it away, Jeff.

So, catalytic converter, it's the device that basically converts the pollutants that come out of the engine into more environmentally friendly gases.

Usually sits right before your muffler.

Yep.

If you've ever driven behind like an old muscle car and you smell the fumes coming off of it versus a newer car, you notice the difference, and the cat is usually responsible for that. Yes, um, it takes a lot of the inert gases and— or takes a lot of the noxious gases and makes them inert. What's weird is magic. I don't actually don't understand the physics of how that works.

I don't either, especially when you look at the components inside of it.

It's like a honeycomb inside there.

Yeah, so it's just some type of a filter, I guess, that just the particles stick to it or something.

Yeah, we're gonna do some research on it. I know how, like, if you clog your catalytic converter, that's never good.

So, no, well, no, it's just like if you don't change out your air filters in your house and they just collect dust.

Well, so one of the big problems that we have right now though is that there's a lot of really nice metal inside your catalytic converter, and that makes them the target for thieves. And so, you know, they'll roll up to your vehicle, and in fact, we had this, one of our team members had this, she was, uh, you know, the downtown area, and got a flat tire, had to leave her car for about 30 minutes, I think, is all she was gone. And in the time they had gone out, gotten a new tire, come back to the vehicle, they caught somebody red-handed trying to cut off her catalytic converter. Now, they'd already gotten into it, so they'd already done damage to the vehicle, um, but they didn't get away with the catalytic converter. But by that point, it doesn't matter, you're replacing the whole system anyways. Because usually what they do is they like to just come up there with like a little battery-powered cutoff wheel and they just grind it. Some of them are more sophisticated and they'll, they'll be able to actually run a plasma torch if they're really fast about it and they want to cut through it quick. But for the most part, it's as low-tech as a, you know, a couple hundred dollar DeWalt grinder.

Yes, the simple action or a simple explanation about a catalytic converter is it acts as a catalyst to get all those precious metals to convert the exhaust to something.

I feel like that cheats when you use the word in the definition. Well, just saying.

Yeah, that's why I was putting in my own words. But if you, if you don't know, Steve does bring up the precious metals. So there's 3 precious metals inside it.

Very precious metals.

Platinum, rhodium, and palladium.

Yeah.

Which I don't even know what 2 of those are, but they sound awesome.

They are way awesome and they're extremely expensive. If you go look at rare earth metals, like what the price per ounce of some of these earth metals are, you know, you've got like diamonds and gold, and there's— you've got platinum. I think rhodium is above platinum. Iridium is above platinum. Um, there's one more, rhodium. But there's some like really fancy metals that are out there, and a lot of them happen to be in your catalytic converter. So it makes it a very nice target for thieves. Because with just a little bit of work, I mean, 30 minutes, you can cut off a cat. And the catalytic converter has, I think, what do we do, the— we went and did the search and it's like $2,000 worth of rare metals.

Yes, up to $2,000.

Yeah, it could even be more.

Yeah, it depends. It really depends on the car and what it takes. They say that the Ferrari has the most expensive, and that's like up— yeah, up to $3,500 in rare metals. But like a Toyota Prius is the most stolen catalytic converter, and you get up to $2,500 off of a Prius.

How about that for something that, you know, normally just runs on batteries?

Well, but it's a hybrid.

True, but still, I'm—

and I'm wondering if that's part of the reason.

Well, and that probably stands the reason why California is one of the top states, the top state, because of all the Priuses there in California. No, it could be all their sustainability. Prius.

Yeah, so roller skate on wheels.

You know, I've actually seen those souped up. But we digress. So yeah, so they, you know, they'll just walk up, cut it off, and walk away. If they just sell the catalytic converter by itself, if they don't want to go through the effort of, you know, trying to melt it down and extract all the metals, you know, they'll get $200, $300 for it, essentially what the value of the part itself is. But yeah, if they go through the effort, you know, they want to extract those rare metals, that's a $2,000, $3,000 payday per catalytic converter. We saw a post where they actually hit somebody's yard that wasn't under security. And, you know, they got, I think, somewhere between 10 and 15 of these. That's a big payday, especially if you're pulling out the metals. Yeah. And so if you're, if you're a fleet, like, you have to take some of this. You know, this falls right into risk management, which is one of the pillars of fleet success, is to be aware that there are major issues happening with catalytic theft. And what do you do to kind of help mitigate that risk? You know, the whole exercise is identify proactively, and then what do you do to mitigate and control the threat to the organization?

Yeah, they say— so one of the articles I just looked at, they said that someone who is a catalytic converter thief, right, who's got practice doing it, less than 2 minutes.

Yeah, I believe that.

To get under, cut, go.

Because they're not doing it cleanly. No, no, no, no, no.

They don't care about the damage of the car, obviously.

And, and that's what also makes it more expensive for a fleet to deal with, is it's not just replacing the part and the labor. It's usually you're going to have to replace the downpipe, you're going to have to replace a lot of exhaust components, some sensors, um, probably going to have to replace the, you know, the joining pipe between the catalytic converter and the muffler, like, because those things just don't— they just cut through them. You know, they don't unbolt them, they don't take the shackles off, they just right through it. Well, and if you're using it, they can.

Well, think about it too, if you're using a plasma torch to cut it off, what else are you cutting through that?

Oh yeah, because you know, this is off the brake lines.

Yeah, all kinds of housing units.

Yeah, yeah, wire looms.

And there's nothing more frustrating than walking out, like if you've ever had your car broken into or something like that, and realizing that you've been hit. You know, there's no worse feeling in the world than just that pit in your stomach. It is like you just feel so violated. And so the idea though is like, what can you do to help prevent this or, you know, like help mitigate some of the risk to your fleet if that's what's happening? You know, do you have a take-home fleet? Are they all parked in the same place in the yard? Is it secured? Is there security involved? Like, what are things that you can do? You know, what are ways that you're exposed first? And then what are things you can do? If it takes 2 minutes, I mean, shoot, you could have it parked in a parking lot and they could just hit it. I mentioned one of our girls here.

Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah.

Took it for a tire change, 30 minutes, and that was all it took. And who knows how long that person had been working on it. They might have only caught 'em and they were there for 5 minutes.

Probably.

Well, if you think about it, if you're a fleet and you have a great big yard full of cars that come home every night, I mean, you could be hit in the night. They could get dozens of 'em.

Yeah.

Oh, it'd be easy pickings.

Yeah.

Especially if all you have is just a standard fence. Just jump the fence. Yeah. 'Cause they're not heavy either.

Yeah, right.

Go get some of them, toss them over the fence to whoever's sitting there waiting, make off quickly.

So what are some ways you can mitigate it?

Yeah, well, I'm going to give you what Farmer said.

Yes.

Before we get into like our ideas, which are much better than Farmer's, might add. So Farmer says, add your license plate number onto your catalytic converter. Steve, why is that a bad idea?

Because you can grind it off, right? Any thief that tears them, they probably have a grinder and cutting them off anyway.

Right. But you can just grind it off, or if you extract the metals out of it, the casing goes away anyways.

Yes.

So, so what does it matter?

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Number 2, park in well-lit areas. Makes sense, but even well-lit areas get robbed.

Yep.

Yep.

Um, and then install an anti-theft device, which I didn't know they had any, but Josh was talking about earlier how—

Oh yeah, Cat Shields. They totally have these shields that you can put around the catalytic converter. Uh, you know, some of them weld onto the frame, some of them bolt onto the frame so you can remove it, because, you know, you do have to service the exhaust system every once in a while, and you want something that you can remove as well.

That's actually what Allstate said— weld it to the frame.

Yeah.

So I mean, that's probably the best advice, is talk to your insurance agent because they have to deal with it. But true, they've probably all gone through this and they have a list of things.

Yeah.

What I read is that you paint them with a very high fluorescent orange paint that's heat resistant. And what that does is it may deter the buyer, the secondhand buyer, because if they see a high, you know, fluorescent, they know somebody probably stole it.

Yeah.

But, you know, if they're fencing them and they're buying them, they probably don't care either.

So, and that's the other side of it too, is, you know, once you deal with criminal underworld, the standards for policing and all that thing kind of go out the window. It does make it difficult if you are a remarketer, like you're not going to resell this thing, you know, to a legitimate company. Because let's face it, the way it's removed is so extreme that you can't reuse it again.

Yeah.

You know, so that's—

well, that's what I was talking about a little bit earlier before we started. The National Conference of State Legislatures actually wrote some legislation on this. You know, they require the purchaser to get an ID, you know, and maintain records on that. But even then, that can be circumvented, I think.

Yeah, it can be. So a quick search shows that a cat shield can cost as low as $50 and as high as several hundred dollars.

And we're seeing, you know, you see some of them that have like these big old cable ties on them. Of course, if you've ever tried to remove a catalytic converter, I can tell you that thing does not come off easily. Like, you really do have to almost use a cutoff wheel if you want to get it off quick. And so, you know, in my mind, throwing on some cable ties, probably not going to slow me down at all.

Just cut around it.

I'm just going to cut around it, or I'm going to cut through the cable ties. I'm already cutting through 2-inch pipe, so why wouldn't I just cut through the ties too? But they do have like shields that you can get on there, you know, a lot like skid plates and armor.

That's what I was gonna say, a skid plate. Make it to— all you're doing is making it harder.

Harder to get to, harder to access. You know, if it takes your guys, you know, if they have to undo some bolts, it takes them an extra, you know, a little bit of time to undo the skid plate, it's still just one more thing that they would have to cut through.

Right, and if someone's in a hurry because they're stealing something, it's most likely gonna be a deterrent.

Yes.

Because that's really all you're trying to do is just slow them down a little bit, enough that they don't want to mess with it. Because if all you've done is just slow them down by 5 minutes, that's, you know, if they can go hit an easier mark, then they're going to get through their pay— they're going to get their payday a lot faster. So for them, it's all about speed and efficiency. And if you slow them down at all, if you're giving them obstacles that they're not ready to overcome, then you're not going to be an easy mark. And they're going to want to move on to the next easier target.

Yes.

Which unfortunately is probably going to be the next fleet down the road. Yep.

The one that didn't protect them.

That isn't protecting them or isn't, you know, another option that I think is actually, you know, just worthwhile when you look at how much it costs you because they're cutting through things like fuel lines and brake lines and all the collateral damage that they do from taking a vehicle out of service by removing the CAT in a violent way like they're doing. Is what's the cost of that versus just hiring a security guard, you know, to patrol the area and to keep an ear out? Because, I mean, it's not like this is a quiet operation. Yeah, you know, if you've ever heard a grinder go off, like, the cutoff wheels do not— they're making a lot of noise. Plasma torches make a lot of noise. So listening for that, walking around, you know, having camera systems up where you can have a centrally monitored yard, having camera systems up that have good resolution You know, we've had break-ins at our property and realized that our camera resolution wasn't good enough. So we had to go get that bumped up, you know, where we couldn't even make out the make and model of a car to now we can read the license plate and get identifying information, identifying facial features. You know, we can zoom in, you can get a lot better detail. And so making sure that you have a security system in place on your yard that's monitoring things like that is a good investment.

One of the things that Allstate also said was if you have a car alarm, raise the level of vibration. So, you know, I don't know a lot of fleets that have that, but if, you know, on your personal car you might have that. And there's a lot of mobile cameras now, you know, that are motion activated. I've got them on my house and I've got one on my car. So I can, you know, it activates and sends me an email if somebody even touches my car, you know. Of course, the danger with that is sometimes the sun comes up and it activates, but you know, other different lighting and stuff like that. But at least it gives you some protection.

Yeah, I also think like motion sensing lights. Yeah, because when a light goes on, it draws attention. But they also have those motion sensing alarms that can go off as well that are very inexpensive. But if you put those around the perimeter, someone crosses through and a loud noise goes off, they're most likely going to jet.

They're going to run.

Yeah, and that's all it needs is you just need a little bit something to slow them down. Or throw a wrinkle at them that they're not expecting. And it's, you know, because they honestly, they don't want to get caught, and that's more important to them than getting the score. And so being able to just counteract them a little bit, just slow them down, put an obstacle in their way that they're not anticipating, and that'll help mitigate a lot of this. I think one of my favorite ideas was— if you haven't seen this guy before, and I think we all can relate because we've all had this happen— there's a guy named Mark Rober. Who's a physicist, helped put the NASA Mars rover on Mars. But he went out and he created the— what did he call this? The porch pirate glitter bomb. Just go YouTube this. Like I tell you, this will not be time wasted. You will feel such a sense of satisfaction watching this guy work and then watching the end results. Like, and he goes through several iterations of this, like where year 1, year 2, year 3. Because every year, like, somebody steals something off of his porch. And so he went through the whole challenge of, like, he figured out how to create, um, you know, actuators and Raspberry Pi and, you know, using all these different sensors and whatnot, that he created a package that somebody would steal, and when they opened it, it would— by the end of it, like, he's perfected this thing— by the end, when they'd open it, it would create a glitter bomb It would spin up and give them like a, you know, a little countdown. And then it would spin this little fan which would launch glitter all over everything that they were around. It had cameras on it so we could record them opening.

It had like 4 cameras.

Yep, it had 4 cameras so he could see no matter which angle they were at, he could see all around him. He could see where it got left. It had GPS tracking on it. It uploaded the imagery to him. So he could actually see this thing, and as it would happen, he's up to 4.0 now. Oh, and the fart smells. He actually put a little, like a fart bomb inside the thing so that it would go off and it would just absolutely reek as you smell it. So he was totally trolling the porch pirates, which is just an incredible sense of justice. If you've ever had a porch pirate take a package off your doorstep, if you've ever had a neighbor have it, like there's just something really cool and vindictive about this glitter bomb that you're like, yes, somebody's fighting for the little guy.

Wait, but does the glitter bomb, does it stain? Because it would be so much better if like the money bags from banks, you open it up and— oh, an ink bomb that like permanently stained them. That'd be so much better.

But there's almost as bad. You know how hard it is to get glitter out of anything? I've got 5 daughters, and so I can tell you glitter anywhere is just—

it's a nightmare.

It's atrocious. It's terrible.

I'm gonna think—

it's getting off your body, out of the carpet. Oh, it's a nightmare.

I'm gonna think that someone that goes in as a porch pirate probably has a shitbox anyway, so they probably don't care if a lot of glitter gets in it.

Maybe like if they open it in their car or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it's— but the smell, you can't get rid of that smell. It smells like, you know, it's like skunk bomb. It's terrible.

See, that part's fantastic, right?

Like just really thinking like, how can we up our game here? Yeah. Um, but so along those lines, like I'm gonna reach out to this guy and say, hey, why don't we do something like that for catalytic converters? You know, just if you want to take it, then fine. But guess what? We're going to record it. And as soon as you start cutting it, you know, boom, here's a little, you know, fun gift for you that, uh, that you weren't—

it'd be awesome if that exactly while they're in the act, just like a smell bomb, you know, skunk bomb.

Listen, that's a reality show I'd watch.

Totally.

Yeah, that'd be great.

That'd be fantastic.

Let's see if we can make it happen. We'll reach out to Mark Rober. I don't know that'll happen, but it'd be—

I'd like to hear from some of our fleets too. What are you doing if you've had this problem, you know?

Yeah.

You know, it'd be interesting to get some feedback.

And so if they want to send us feedback, what do they need to do? They need to send us an email at podcast@rtfleet.com.

Yep.

You know, if you want to send us any feedback, anything you're doing, as always, you can go contribute up on the NAFAB boards. You know, they're asking all kinds of questions about this. But yeah, we'd love to get your feedback on that. So that's going to wrap it up for us today. As always, thank you for listening. And a reminder, we've got our Fleet Success Summit. Coming up April 20th through 21st out here in Mesa, Arizona. We are extending the early bird pricing through the end of January as we're making a lot of announcements about speakers this past week. If you didn't see, we've got Kristin Hadeed coming, author of Permission to Screw Up, a terrific story about all the mistakes she made in her startup, how she engages millennials to do something that nobody likes to do, which is cleaning toilets and scrubbing down dorms. But how she creates an engaged workforce out of that. We've got Mike Pitcher coming, who's going to talk to us all about, I think, leadership. We're still working on some of the topics with these speakers, but I believe we've confirmed Mike Rayband, one of our former guests on this show, a great listener, a great friend in the industry, and a whole host of others. You know, it's going to be 12, 13 speakers, one stage, two days out here in Mesa. It's going to be awesome. fleetsuccesssummit.com. We'd love to have you guys out here.

I'm looking forward to it. This is something that's needed in the industry for a long time.

100%.

When I was a fleet manager, this is something I would have jumped at.

Yeah.

To get all these thought leaders in one room for a couple of days.

Well, and especially too, not just the normal fleet-focused topics. You know, we're talking about culture, we're talking about everything we talk about here on the podcast.

Yep.

And I love that we're going to hear it from people, not us. You know, like we've been talking about it on the podcast, but I'm going to hear things and I'm going to learn things. I'm excited about that. One of the biggest challenges— I threw a poll up not too long ago— was around employee retention. And, you know, a lot of the pillars really tie into how do you deal with employee retention. And we've got some great speakers coming to talk exactly about that. How do you get an engaged workforce, a retained workforce? So super excited about that. Again, fleetsuccesssummit.com, April 20th, 21st, early bird discount through the end of January. Go out and register. And as always, tell your friends, tell your coworkers, tag us on media @FleetSuccess and subscribe to the Fleet Success Show wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time.

Go Cards!

Happy New Year.

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