Stolen John Deere Tractor Recovered at Bottom of Quarry, Being Used to Load Stolen Copper

In early April 2012, an individual rented a 2006 John Deere 310 Tractor from Hertz Equipment Rentals for use at a construction site along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, near the city of Tracy. When the renter arrived at the site on the afternoon of April 9, he discovered that unknown suspects had stolen the tractor and he immediately reported the theft to the California Highway Patrol.

CHP officers completed a stolen vehicle report and had the tractor’s information entered into the state and federal crime computer systems. This routine police action automatically activated the LoJack transponder concealed in the tractor. Neither the owners nor law enforcement agents had to do anything else to activate the LoJack Vehicle Recovery Transponder, because LoJack’s interface with the police is both seamless and instantaneous.

Several days later, officers with the San Joaquin Sheriff’s Department began to receive the tractor’s silent LoJack signal on their patrol car’s LoJack Police Tracking Computers. The officers requested assistance, and members of the California Highway Patrol responded to the rural area south of the city of Tracy. Using the tracking computer’s directions, the officers followed the signal to an abandoned rock quarry. There, the officers located the tractor at the bottom of the pit. No suspects were at the location, but it appeared that someone was stripping the nearby abandoned buildings of their copper wire, and loading into the front bucket of the tractor.

The tractor was impounded and stored until it could be released to the owner at a later time.