A Naples construction company suffered a $10,000 loss after equipment was reportedly stolen from a company site in Cape Coral.
Michael Ralph of Haleakala Construction Inc., located at 5758 Taylor Road, Naples, notified the Cape Coral Police Department Tuesday morning that two 6-foot hydraulic pumps were missing from the site at Del Prado Boulevard North and Northeast 10th Street.
Each pump is worth approximately $5,000.
“It was done over the weekend,” Ralph, a superintendent with the company, said during a telephone interview Wednesday. “They were there Friday night.”
The pumps were discovered missing by a driver who stopped by the site to pick up the equipment to move it to another job. According to Ralph, the site is used as a stockpile area where brick, cement, hoses and such is kept.
“There was no equipment there besides these hydraulic pump heads,” he said.
A Cape police report states that the pumps are metallic in color and each weigh about 200 pounds. Ralph said the pump theft is a first for Haleakala Construction, which has been in business since the 1980s.
“This is a first time for these. They’re not a common item to get stolen,” he said, adding that he does not think the culprit is a rival company.
“I don’t think it was any other contractor,” Ralph said. “Everybody is scraping everything metal now, and these are solid steel.”
The company intends to press charges. No make, model or serial number information was available for the pumps, according to the police report.
“Anything right now is a hit. The economy is terrible,” Ralph said of the theft. “There’s no money in these jobs, and to lose equipment or lose money at all is to go backwards.”