28 Jan 2026 · 4 min
A short podcast conversation (hosts Jeff Watson and Luke) advising car dealers on securing their dealerships. They discuss physical security measures—cameras, lighting, fences, hurricane-proof half-inch glass, blocking driveways with cars, secure gates—and operational practices like taking keys and titles home, storing keys separately behind locked doors, and strengthening internal controls to prevent employee theft. The hosts share an anecdote of a prior break-in that cost about $45,000 and emphasize being proactive and attentive.
Questions this episode answers
$45,000
Half-inch thick, hurricane-proof glass
Three cars per driveway (two driveways = six cars)
Chapters
Just gonna ambush you, bro. I'm just gonna ambush you. Luke. Happy Monday, buddy. Hope you had a great weekend, man. Things are crazy out there. I know that. You know, you have checked your insurance policy to make sure that if anything crazy happens at your car lot, you're covered, right? You've checked your cameras, you've checked your security settings. You've made sure people are being smart. Maybe you're taking keys home, maybe you're taking titles home. What are you doing in your dealership? I'm in a super. I'm. I'm not in a crazy area. I'm not in a suburb. I'm not in like the downtown where I'm going to get, you know, I'm not too worried about it.
But you know, we, I think, I think one of our third or fourth episodes was talking about securing your dealership. And it's cause we'd had some issues with just break ins at our store. And this is something that, you know, I mean these riots, hopefully they'll. It seems like they've calmed down a little bit, but hopefully we'll see less.
And less of this.
But who knows? You should always secure your dealership. If you don't have a safe place to put your keys at night, you just take your keys home. I mean, it's that simple. We have a border around our entire dealership where if you want to try to drive a car out of our dealership, you'd have to jump over cars. You know, you have to, you'd have to jump over a fence that goes around it that's about 2ft tall, made out of huge pipe. We block each entrance. You can't come in our store. There's all kinds of things you can do. We've got, I mean we got half inch thick glass that's hurricane proof at our store. And we went to that because of the break ins that we had and how much it cost us. It cost us $45,000. Putting new windows in our, in our store were essentially unbreakable. That gives me peace of mind. And so you've got to take those precautions because, just because you don't think at your store that anything may not happen. Jeff, they can. And I would, I'd recommend securing your, your facility as best you can.
Are there any other areas of exposure that we dealers tips you could share with us about being smart? I mean, I guess you kind of got to get your. You got to look at it from an outsider standpoint. You know, wear your soft target. You have security lights, cameras are One thing sure, you might be able to record the yahoo's tearing up your dealership and stealing your cars, but they're gonna have masks on and they're gonna get away with it. But are there ways we can deter it by, you know, making sure our lot is well lit, maybe getting some of those solar motion sensor lights in the corners, or like you said, making sure we have block cars and things that would keep them from physically driving a car off your lot.
That's the main thing, is to block. Your interest is. And make sure you have a. Some sort of gate system, something that holds all your cars in your lot. You know, you can do it. You know, like CarMax, they have those up and down things, and they have a secured fence all the way around. You can do that if you want, but you can do something a little cheaper, too. We block each driveway with three cars. So we've got two driveways. That's six cars every night we have to pull in. We secure those keys in a different area compared to where we secure our normal keys, and they're all behind massively locked doors. You know, Jeff, lights are cheap, and you should have lights. And that's almost an advertising thing. But the biggest thefts that happen in the car business are from the inside. So you may worry about losing a car, you may worry about somebody breaking in, but the main theft that you really need to worry about, dealers do, is if you have someone else monitoring your money and handling your money. You know, we could spend a whole episode on that. We may soon, but.
Yeah, yeah, that's where you need to look. Yeah, yeah. You need to make sure your processes are in place internally. And like I said, that's a whole nother episode we need to cover. But also look at those areas where, I mean, look at every little thing. Can this be replaced? And what's the hassle to replace it as opposed to secure it? Maybe you do need to take your key box home every night this week or for the next couple weeks. You need to take your titles home every week. You need to make sure your documents are secured somewhere. Like Luke was saying, just be a little tighter. Be a little more attentive. This week for sure.
All right, buddy.
Okay. Talk to you Thursday.
See you.