The use of forklifts has spiked in banking and finance in the United States, but not for regular materials handling operations.

In recent weeks, forklifts have been used in a number of bank heists. The latest robbery, reported in Georgia's Gwinnet Daily Post, saw a forklift, hot-wired and stolen from a construction site in Lilburn, used to steal an ATM from the Wachovia Bank.

A police spokesman is quoted as saying two men stole the forklift, drove it over a fence to the bank and used it to lift the ATM up off the foundation and place in a pickup truck.

The robbery represents an increase in sophistication over a similar incident two weeks earlier when a front-end loader was used to wrench two ATMs from their moorings at the Bank of America branch in Dacula.

Meanwhile, federal agents in Van Buren suspect a forklift was used to remove the one-ton safe from the First Community Bank.

The burglars apparently stole a forklift from a construction site near the bank and then used it to hoist the safe out of the bank. Police aren't yet sure if the burglars used the forklift to ram into the bank, creating a hole, or if they used another vehicle or method to get in.

Last December, US police departments reported at least four ATM thefts in which the suspects used stolen construction equipment or other vehicles to crash through the front doors of drugstores. That rash of thefts ended when Walgreens drugstore officials began removing cash from the machines at night.