You lock up every night. You've never had an issue. Then one morning you walk out to the ute and the padlock's cut, the box is empty, and a lifetime of tools you've built up — some from your first year as an apprentice — are just gone.
It happens to tradies all the time, and it's almost never on a busy work site where someone might see. It's in a quiet suburban driveway, in the dark, while everyone's asleep. By the time you notice, whoever did it is long gone.
The tools are the bad part. What makes it worse is what comes next.
The bit nobody thinks about until it's too late
Your insurer (or the police, for that matter) isn't going to take your word for what was in that box. They'll want proof: what you owned, roughly what it was worth, and ideally when you bought it. If you can't show that, you can end up settling for a lot less than what you actually lost — or not being able to claim at all.
Most tradies genuinely couldn't list everything in their ute off the top of their head. Brands, models, serial numbers on the gear that has them — it's a lot to keep in your memory, especially when you're rattled and just trying to get to a job.
What actually helps at claim time
- A photo of each tool or at least the set, taken before anything ever goes missing
- Purchase receipts or at least a rough date and price for the bigger items
- Serial numbers for power tools, where they're printed on the tool
- One place to find all of it fast — not scattered across old emails, texts to yourself, and a shoebox of receipts
Where My Asset Mate comes in
My Asset Mate lets you snap a photo of your tools as you go, log what they are, what you paid, and the serial number if it's got one — all sitting safely on your phone, and in the cloud too if you choose.
If the worst happens, you're not trying to reconstruct your toolbox from memory at 6am. You open the app, and it's all there — ready to hand to your insurer or the police.
Takes a few minutes the first time you set it up. After that, it's just a habit — snap a photo when you buy something new, and you're covered without thinking about it again.