Industries · Contractor and trade yards
Contractor yard theft prevention for the copper, tools and vans you leave overnight.
VuePoint Secure puts 24/7 live monitoring on electrician, plumbing and trade yards. Behavior AI flags anyone in the yard after hours; an operator verifies it, warns them over a talk-down speaker, triggers the siren and strobe, and alerts your phone. Use your existing cameras, or a solar tripod at under $1,000 per unit per month.
The problem
Your yard holds a week of materials and the vans that carry them.
Wire spools, copper pipe and fittings, a rack of power tools, a trailer, and four or five vans parked nose to fence. It is all in one place, it is all resellable, and it sits there every night and every weekend. A loss is not just the replacement cost. It is the crews who cannot start Monday.
Metal is a target well beyond jobsites. CargoNet, Verisk's cargo-theft unit, logged 2,646 cargo thefts in the US and Canada in 2025, up 18%, with losses of about $725 million, and metal thefts up 77%. California had the most incidents, at 1,218 (CargoNet/Verisk, reported by CCJ, January 2026). Those figures cover freight, but the copper and wire are the same goods your yard stores.
Vans draw their own attention. State Farm's catalytic converter theft claims fell from about 45,000 in 2022 to 21,200 in 2023, and dropped another 74% in the first half of 2024 (State Farm, September 2024). The trend is down, yet California still saw more than 2,000 claims in that half-year.
Equipment and tools are hard to get back. Construction equipment theft is a widely cited estimate of $300 million to $1 billion a year (NER and NICB, no year attached), and only about 21% of stolen heavy equipment is recovered, based on 2016 data from NER, Verisk and NICB reported by Construction Equipment Guide in 2025.
How it works
Detect, verify, warn, alert.
- 1
Detect
Behavior AI learns your yard's rhythm. Vans leaving at 6:30 a.m. are normal. A person at the wire rack at 11 p.m. on a Saturday is not.
- 2
Verify
A live operator checks the clip first, so you are not called about wind moving the gate or a cat on the van roof.
- 3
Warn
The operator speaks to the person over the talk-down speaker and can trigger the siren and strobe.
- 4
Alert
You, or whoever is on call that week, get the alert with the clip. The decision about what happens next stays with you.
What we watch for
The four spots that matter in most trade yards.
Wire, copper and material racks
Spools and pipe stacked by the fence or in an open bay. A camera on the rack and its approach covers the most valuable square footage in the yard.
Vans and work trucks
People walking between parked vans, trying doors, or crawling underneath. Ladder racks and side bins are covered in the same view.
Tool cribs, containers and trailers
Activity at the container door or the enclosed trailer after hours, including someone working on a lock.
Gates and fence lines
Someone climbing the fence, cutting the chain or lifting the gate off its track.
Cost compared
Night guard vs trailer vs monitored cameras, per month.
Overnight guard: $9,000 to $14,400
Twelve hours a night for 30 nights is 360 hours. At $25 to $40 an hour bill rate (Mobile Video Guard, April 2026, vendor estimate), that is $9,000 to $14,400 a month. And it covers one spot at a time.
Monitored camera trailer: $1,000 to $4,500 plus delivery
Rentals run $1,000 to $4,500 a month (LP Magazine, Sept 2026; ECAM 2026 guide, vendor estimate), plus $300 to $800 delivery each way (TrueLook, vendor estimate). A trailer weighing 1,400 lb or more takes up two van spaces.
VuePoint: tripod or your cameras
A solar tripod is under $1,000 per unit per month, and one unit with dual PTZ cameras covers a small yard. If you already have cameras, an edge device adds monitoring to them. Your quote lists what is included.
Sized for a trade business
One unit, one yard, one phone number.
Most trade yards need one or two camera positions: one on the gate and the van line, one on the material rack. The solar tripod covers both with its two PTZ cameras, needs no power or network, and is about 120 lb, so it ships by freight and one person sets it up. When the business moves to a bigger yard, the tripod goes with it. See the solar tripod.
Already have cameras on the building? An edge device connects them to VuePoint without port forwarding, so you keep the cameras you paid for and add the people watching them. A talk-down warning needs a speaker near the camera; the site review tells you if you need one.
Where we are a poor fit: a yard in a shared industrial park where you cannot mount or place anything, or a yard with no cellular signal and no network. We will tell you on the site review rather than after you sign.
Where we serve
Trade yards in California, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon.
VuePoint Secure runs from Las Vegas and works with electrical, plumbing, HVAC, roofing and general trade contractors across California, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon.
This page is about theft and after-hours intrusion. If you want daytime operations data instead, such as van departure times, tool-crib access and loadout checks, see small business and trades analytics. Out on the job, the same units cover construction sites. Larger yards with fuel and heavy equipment are covered in equipment yards after dark, and fence-line coverage in perimeter intrusion detection.
FAQ
Contractor yard security: common questions
How do electricians and plumbers protect their yards and vans from theft?
Start with the basics: a solid fence and gate, lighting on the van line, wire and copper stored inside or in a locked container, and nothing of value left in vans overnight. Keep serial numbers for tools. Then put a monitored camera on the gate, the vans and the material rack, so someone after hours is warned while they are still in the yard.
How do I protect copper wire in my yard?
Keep spools in a locked container or building when you can, and out of view from the street when you cannot. Mark spools so they can be identified. Point a monitored camera at the storage spot and its approach, so an operator can warn someone before the spool leaves the yard.
Can you watch our work vans parked overnight?
Yes, if they park inside the yard or in a lot a camera can see. One PTZ camera can cover a row of vans, and Behavior AI flags people moving between them after hours.
Do I need power or internet in the yard?
Not for the solar tripod. It runs on its own panel and battery and connects over 5G. If you use your existing cameras, the edge device uses your network without port forwarding.
What does contractor yard monitoring cost?
A solar tripod is under $1,000 per unit per month, and many small yards need one unit. Monitoring on existing cameras is quoted by camera count and hours. An overnight guard, by comparison, runs about $9,000 to $14,400 a month at vendor-estimated bill rates.
We already have cameras. Why would we add monitoring?
Recorded footage tells you what happened after it happened. Research on CCTV finds actively monitored systems are associated with larger crime reductions than passive recording (Piza et al., Criminology & Public Policy, 2019). Monitoring adds a person who can speak to the intruder while they are in the yard.
Get a free site review
Send the yard address, where the vans and materials sit, and what cameras you have. We will tell you how many units it needs and the monthly price.
Lost a spool or a van battery lately?
Tell us about the yard. We will come back with one plan and one price.