Batavia school bus company hit with $14K catalytic converter theft

A school bus company reported the theft of four catalytic converters at a cost of nearly $14,300, according to Batavia police reports released after a Freedom of Information Act request.

Illinois Central School Bus, located at 1000 Swanson Drive, Batavia, reported the theft Feb. 4, according to the police report. Catalytic converters from four yellow 2021 Bluebird school buses were stolen, and all four buses were damaged, the report stated.

“When they cut your pipes, they are not cutting in a place a mechanic would,” Regional Operations Manager Tim Stieber said. “A mechanic would say, ‘Cut here and here.’ No, they mess it up so you have to have this pipe and that pipe.”

School buses are attractive for catalytic converter theft because they are high up off the ground, Stieber said.

“Nowadays, they have a hard time getting a catalytic converter from a minivan. They can’t crawl under without jacking it up,” Stieber said. “But an SUV or a school bus, they’re that much higher off the ground. They just go to Home Depot, buy a battery-operated cutting tool and two cuts – ZZZT ZZZT – and it falls on the ground."

Stieber said the company gets hit with these kinds of thefts about every two years.

In this incident, all four buses were parked next to each other along the south fence of the property near the southeast corner.

Surveillance video showed two people walking around the buses between 2:30 and 3:05 a.m. and they appeared to have entered the property on foot from the southeast side, the report stated.

Stieber said they believe the thieves climbed a tree, stepped on the barbed wire on top of the fence and jumped over it.

The thieves struck those four buses because they are the only four gas buses parked along the fence line. Most of the rest are diesel buses and not the target of catalytic converter thieves, Stieber said.

“We made a mistake and put these gas buses over there. It’s only these,” Stieber said. “Diesel buses do not have catalytic converters. They have something totally different, totally different technology.”

Going forward, Stieber said he’d park the gas buses in the middle of the lot under lights and upgrade the security monitoring system with more cameras.

A similar theft was discovered Feb. 11 at Troy Community School District in Joliet where 30 catalytic converters were cut from school buses there – and from a plow truck kept in the same area, officials said.

A catalytic converter is part of a vehicle’s exhaust system which help protect the environment by controlling harmful emissions.

Converters have been required in every vehicle in the U.S. since 1975.

Thieves often target catalytic converters because they contain precious metals platinum, rhodium and palladium.

Stieber said he does not believe that’s why the catalytic converters were stolen.

“They’re not taking out precious metals, they’re taking them out to the junk yard,” Stieber speculated.

If a catalytic converter was worth $100 selling to a junk yard, then a converter from a bus would be worth maybe $200 or $250, Stieber said.

“A junk yard in the business of junk knows how to do it,” Steiber said.

He said he has no hope the thieves ever will be caught.

“They’re never going to get an arrest,” Stieber said. “That’s what the cops always tell us.”