Usually yes — under contractors equipment inland marine, and the honest answer depends on your form. Theft of a high-value drill from a job site, including a remote one left unattended overnight, is the signature loss that line is built to respond to. What decides whether a claim actually pays is the wording of your form, whether the drill was properly scheduled, and any security conditions attached to it.
That trips up contractors because the instinct is to reach for general liability — the policy primes ask about, the one that “covers the job.” But a stolen drill is not a third-party claim; it is a loss to your own most expensive machine, and it sits on an entirely different line. Knowing which policy answers, and what that policy expects of you at the site, is the difference between a theft claim that pays and a six-figure machine that walks off uninsured in practice.
A stolen drill is a property loss, not a liability one
The first thing to get straight is which policy is even in play. General liability responds to third-party bodily injury and property damage your work causes — a member of the public hurt, a property owner’s lot damaged. It does not respond to the loss of your own equipment. When your directional drill is stolen, nothing third-party happened; you lost your own property. That is a contractors equipment matter, written on an inland-marine form built for movable gear, not a liability one.
This is the same boundary that decides who pays when a strike damages your own drill stem rather than someone else’s line — your equipment is your equipment, and it sits with the inland-marine line wherever it goes. We do not re-explain how that whole line works here; the contractors equipment page walks scheduling, transit, and the seam with commercial auto in detail. The point for this narrower question is that theft of the drill is squarely an equipment-coverage event, and the work is making sure your form, schedule, and conditions line up before the rig is ever left somewhere it can be taken.
The remote, unattended site is the whole point
The reason fiber contractors carry this line so seriously is precisely the scenario in the question: a high-value directional drill parked at a remote site overnight or across a weekend, far from the yard, where no one is watching. That is a well-known theft target, and the loss when it happens is severe — these are not hand tools that walk off, they are the machine the bore depends on. Contractors equipment is designed to respond to theft and damage where the gear sits unattended, which is exactly where a fixed-location property policy cannot follow it.
But “designed to respond” is conditional, and the conditions are where claims are won or lost. A directional drilling operation that leaves rigs at remote builds should expect its form to read against that exposure, and should know the answer before a loss — not learn it from a denial letter. The honest framing is that the policy is built for this loss and still expects something of you at the site; the next two sections are what.
Scheduling: a drill is not a hand tool
A contractors equipment policy is usually arranged in two layers. Scheduled coverage lists higher-value machines individually, each with its own limit set to what the item would cost to replace. Blanket coverage sets a single limit for the pool of smaller tools, locators, and accessories you do not want to list one by one. A directional drill belongs on the schedule — it is the textbook big-ticket item — and the mistake that hurts is letting a costly machine ride on a blanket limit sized for hand tools.
The consequence is concrete. If a high-value drill is swept into a blanket limit and then stolen, the claim can run past that limit and leave you covering the gap, even though theft was a covered peril and the machine was insured “on the policy.” Scheduling the drill to its real replacement cost is what makes the coverage match the loss. That is set when the policy is built, from your equipment list and how you would actually replace the rig, which is why we ask what you own and what it spends the night next to before quoting rather than after.
Security conditions: what the policy expects of you
The second conditional is the one contractors least expect: a contractors equipment form can attach security conditions to unattended-site theft. Depending on the form, that can mean disabling or immobilizing the machine, securing the keys, locking a compound or staging area, or documenting where high-value gear is left overnight. These are not fine-print traps for their own sake — they are how a carrier prices the unattended-site exposure at all. But if a condition applies to your policy and was not met, a carrier can reduce or deny a claim even though theft is a covered peril and the drill was properly scheduled.
This is exactly why the form is read before it binds rather than after a loss. You want to know what your policy expects of you at the remote site — and to build practices around it — while you can still change the answer. Strong, documented site security does double duty: it satisfies the conditions that keep a claim payable, and it reads as risk control that shapes how a carrier rates and renews you.
The practical move is to turn whatever the form requires into a routine the crew runs without thinking, the same way a pre-bore locate or a lockout step becomes habit. If the form expects the machine immobilized and the keys secured overnight, that should be the last thing done before the crew leaves the site every night, not a measure that gets remembered only when a build feels exposed. Documentation matters as much as the act: a photo of the secured rig, a note of where it was left, and a consistent practice across crews are what let you show the condition was met if a claim is ever questioned. A condition you satisfy most nights but cannot prove on the night of the loss is a weaker position than one you can document as standard practice, which is why the discipline is built into the workflow rather than left to memory at a remote site. The National Insurance Crime Bureau tracks heavy-equipment theft and publishes prevention guidance built around exactly this exposure, and the Insurance Information Institute explains why movable gear sits on an inland-marine form rather than a fixed-location property policy. OSHA site-control practices and 811 one-call locating discipline are about safety and damage prevention rather than theft, but the same operational rigor that produces a clean locate record tends to produce the documented, secured site a theft claim relies on.
Real-World Scenario: A directional drill is left at a remote build over a weekend while the crew is off the job, and it is stolen overnight. Because the contractor had scheduled the drill individually on its contractors equipment policy and followed the security practices the form required — immobilizing the machine and securing the staging area — the loss is the kind the inland-marine line is built to respond to, subject to the policy’s terms. A contractor who had swept the same drill into a blanket limit for hand tools, or skipped the security condition the form attached, could have found the claim reduced or short of the machine’s replacement reality.
Confirm the form before the rig is parked far from the yard
Because the answer turns on your form, your schedule, and any security conditions, “is my drill covered if it’s stolen” is a question to settle before the rig is ever left somewhere it can be taken. Confirm the drill is scheduled to its replacement cost, read the security conditions your form attaches to unattended-site theft, and make sure the equipment is covered in transit on the trailer as well as at the site — theft off a trailer between jobs is within inland marine, while the trailer and truck themselves are a commercial auto matter the two policies hand off at.
The reliable path is to treat the drill the way the loss does: a high-value, movable machine that is most exposed exactly where it is least watched. Build the schedule from your real equipment list, satisfy the conditions the form sets, and have it reviewed alongside the rest of your stack so nothing falls through the seam between equipment, auto, and liability. It is also one of the larger line items behind how the work is priced, which we cover in our fiber optic contractor insurance cost guide — and the same equipment line answers the companion question of whether a fusion splicer damaged in transit is covered. When you are ready, start a quote and walk us through your equipment list and where it spends the night, or browse the full coverage overview to see how the lines fit together.