Dealership security
for the lot after close.

What does a dealership actually lose?

Parts, not whole cars. Washington recorded 17,499 vehicle thefts in 2025, 38 percent fewer than the year before and the lowest in over 23 years1. A dealer lot still loses what comes off a car in a few minutes: catalytic converters, wheels and tires, batteries and anything left in the cabin. It also loses keys, and parts from the parts room.

Washington tightened its scrap metal law in 2022 to make stolen catalytic converters harder to sell2. A converter is cut out in minutes. A car on blocks is a lost sale and a body shop bill. Both happen at night, in a back row, where one camera on the showroom corner sees nothing.

Cameras for the lot, the service drive and the parts room

Cameras go down every row, around the perimeter and on every vehicle exit. The dark back rows by the fence need them most, because that is where a car can be lifted without being seen from the street. Inside, the service drive, the parts counter, the parts room door, the cashier and the key cabinet each get a camera.

Lot cameras usually go on the light poles, which already have power and height. Where a pole cannot carry network cable, the cable plan comes first: a trench, an aerial run from the building, or a wireless bridge. Every view is checked after dark on the walk-through, because a row that looks covered at noon can be black under one failed pole light. The camera lines we install are on the security cameras page.

A plate for every car that leaves

Every vehicle exit gets its own plate camera, separate from the camera that shows the scene. It points at the spot where a car slows to turn onto the street, zoomed tight and lit for night. Plates land on a Milesight NVR with plate search3, so finding the car that left at 3:12 a.m. takes a search, not an hour of footage.

That matters in daylight too. A test drive that does not come back, or a car that leaves the service lot without paperwork, leaves a plate and a time on the recorder.

Keys: the cabinet logs it, the camera shows it

Your electronic key cabinet stays. It already controls who can take which key and writes down when. What it cannot record is the person standing in front of it. A camera on the cabinet closes that gap. When a key goes missing, the cabinet log gives the minute and the camera shows who took it.

A key on a hook in an open office is the easiest way to lose a whole car. If the lot still runs on hooks, the walk-through will say so.

Who is watching the lot after close?

You, from your phone, or a remote guard. Cameras alone record the car going up on blocks and send an alert. If nobody answers it, the footage waits for the sales team to find the car in the morning.

Live guard monitoring puts a guard on the back rows, the perimeter and the exits from close to open. The guard talks through a speaker on the pole to anyone crouched by a wheel, before the lug nuts come off. Lot lighting matters as much as the camera: the guard can only act on what the camera sees at 2 a.m., so a failed pole light is fixed before a camera is added.

Most dealers weigh it against an overnight guard. A guard is paid for every hour on site and walks one row at a time. Monitoring costs $150 a month for the first camera and $75 for each additional camera, as of October 2026, and it covers every monitored row at once. How it works is on the remote video monitoring page.

The building: service, parts and offices

The service department, the parts room and the offices get an intrusion alarm of their own. We fit Ajax contacts on every door and every bay door, motion in the parts room, and MotionCam detectors whose photos show the operator what set the alarm off. Becklar, a UL-listed central station, monitors it month to month. Adding a camera clip to those alarms is possible on some sites; the verified alarm monitoring page says when.

The customer lounge Wi-Fi and the service drive tablets ride on the same network as the cameras, on separate VLANs. That is covered on the business Wi-Fi page.

What drives the cost?

A lot quote turns on four things. The number of rows and poles, whether the poles have spare conduit for network cable, the exits that need a plate camera, and the distance from the farthest pole to the building. Using a pole's existing conduit costs far less than trenching a paved lot.

The proposal is itemized per camera. The recorder is sized to the retention you ask for, and monitored lenses are a monthly line alongside the install.

Where we work

We install from 415 Railroad Ave S in Kent and cover south King County and Pierce County: Kent, Renton, Tukwila, Federal Way, Auburn, Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, Bonney Lake and Gig Harbor. Rivas Technology Group holds WA electrical contractor license RIVASGL799DR, active, bonded and insured4, and is an Ajax Systems dealer listed on ajax.systems. Showroom screens are on the digital signage page, and the rest of the commercial platform on business security.