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Metal's rising value makes contractors' businesses targets for theft
Rick Anderson's story isn't unique, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. In late 2005, thieves broke into the storage yard of his company, RLA Sheet Metal Inc. Behind the chain-link fence and barbed wire, the Healdsburg, Calif., business kept trailers and service trucks - and 600 pounds of copper waiting to be recycled.
The thieves hand-carried each piece and loaded it into a vehicle parked on a nearby street. Anderson figures the leftover copper was worth more than $1,000.
Six months later, the company was hit again. This time, he says, the thieves were much more efficient - they simply backed their vehicle into the yard and took the whole bin.
Many contractors, builders and building owners nationwide have similar stories. For more than two years, copper, buoyed by a worldwide building boom, has been fetching record prices - a fact not lost on those who have no qualms about breaking into homes or businesses to get at the suddenly very precious metal.
"They're going through the fences, they're going through the gates, they're going through anything to get it," Anderson says. "All construction is just getting hammered."
Big money
In recent weeks, copper has been averaging $3-30 a pound - down about 20 cents from a year ago, but twice what it was fetching back in 2004, according to the Web site MetalPrices.com. In summer 2006, prices were as high as $4 a pound.
Different kinds of copper, such as wire, pipe and cable, command different prices, but all are far above historical averages. And that, along with copper's never-ending ability to be recycled, has made everything from air-conditioning compressors to telephone wires a favorite target of thieves, who sell the metal to scrap yards and dealers.
"It's very unfortunate," says Danielle McAuley, spokeswoman for the Copper Development Association, a New Yorkbased group that promotes the metal. "It's a lot of materials (being stolen) as far as I've heard."
The association has an official policy of not commenting on specific incidents, although McAuley says they prove the metal's popularity.
"It speaks to the essential nature of copper," she says.
With prices so high, some thieves have taken to risking their lives...