Comment: How to avoid theft of your caravan or camper

Kev,
I never had a problem when I had her. She is gone now but I still miss her. Lovely with children and people, but she never took any crap from anyone. She always seemed to know who was friend or foe.

I still miss her.

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My old friend.
RA.

There don't seem to be many thefts of vans or campers. A thief needs to be well organised and must really want that particular trailer to go to so much trouble. An opportunistic thief is more likely to just cut through your door and help themselves to the contents and leave a mess behind.Take reasonable precautions such as not camping too close to a town or in a place that has evidence of low life parties etc and have good insurance. As for tracking the van if it were stolen - I am not sure I would want it back after some low life had been using or stripping it for a few days or weeks! Lynne

This is an area of interest for me as well as we are getting a new van soon ($$$'s). Theft is of concern when you leave the van in a free camping spot somewhere for days trek on foot or whatever.
Have a look at this site:

http://www.ozspy.com.au/products/8-GPS-Tracking/184-Real-Time-GPS-Vehicle-and-Personal-Tracker-with-Audio/

Ozspy have a GPS vehicle tracker that can link to your mobile phone (SMS). But you would need to have mobile reception I guess. It can track a stolen vehicle to with 15 metres. I will investigate this product further in due course.

My plan is get some device that I can hide in the van (or underneath) so that a thief would not know it was there. If it can be hard wired in the van 12v power supply as well so that it will not need battery replacement would be the best option.

Let the forum know Kev what your research comes up with.

Cheers

PS Our new van will have a Hyland DO35 hitch which helps a little with theft - as a opportunistic thief is unlikely to have fitted to his vehicle the Hyland vehicular component.

There is probably a much higher likelihood of having it stolen from your residential address than out on the road, not to say it can't happen though. We use a similar device (Talon) when out and about...

Our neighbour had their Caravan stolen recently....but got it back!

Cheers, The Landy

Seen one van with a sign on the door.

This Van is insured by SMITH & WESSON.


I hoped it worked for them.

Sir kev,

we have found when we leave our van that the best way to stop some one steeling it is to lower the front of the van onto a brick or lump of wood and take the jockey wheel with us, our ball weight is 180kg and this makes it very bloody hard for a theif to lift the van by hand and put it on the hitch,. i also leave the van like this at home too !!
having said that i have never heard of a van or camper trailer being stolen from a camp site?

Peter...