United Rentals recently won a battle with San Diego city officials for the right to install an electric fence to keep thieves away, the San Diego Union Tribune reported. The San Diego Planning Commission voted unanimously to overturn a previous city decision that prohibited the rental company from installing an electric fence because of concerns it could injure nearby residents.
Regulations restrict electrified fences to industrial and agricultural zones, while the United Rentals facility is in a commercial zone next to residential housing. Local citizens had expressed concerns because residents might not understand that the fencing is electric thus risking injury.
The community planning group voted to grant an exemption because United Rentals has suffered a rash of thefts of equipment, tools and raw materials that have created chaos for the business and forced police to repeatedly visit the site. Thieves often take metal from the business and sell it to recycling companies.
An official from Electric Guard Dog said the fence would not face the residential housing and would be surrounded by a separate non-electric fence with a space between the two, and warning signs would be posted in multiple languages at 30-foot intervals.
For more on the story, go to: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/san-diego/story/2019-09-26/equipment-rental-company-finally-wins-long-battle-with-city-for-electrified-security-fence
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.