At 3am this morning, a truckie returned to his vehicle to find both the truck and trailer covered with graffiti.
Jack drives for Tassie based operation DBC Cartage and has been a truckie for the past seven years. He says it’s the first time he’s seen anything like this happen to the equipment.
“We all take a pride in the gear,” he said. “I had the torch out and it looked really bad – but I didn’t really want to even look at it to be honest.”
The 4900 Western Star and log trailer was parked on the main road of the suburb of Perth, opposite the playground and public toilets. Perth is about 20 kilometres south of Launceston, on the Midland Highway.
DBC Cartage predominantly carts plantation logs to various mills around Bell Bay.
Third generation transport operator, Drew Bardenhogen, 34, started the company 13 years ago with just one truck – and since then, he’s built the fleet up to five.
“Obvisouly now we’ve lost a day’s work with that truck and our driver was upset too. We have one driver per truck and Jack was gutted to see it like that this morning,” said Bardenhogen.
“They sprayed the whole truck and the trailer. Lucky enough they used pretty crappy paint, so the boys have spent the whole day getting it all off.
“There have been reports of some kids throwing rocks on the other side of town, but no graffiti. I was talking to my dad about it too – he had trucks and so did my grandfather, and he’s never had anything happen like that happen either.
“Apparently there are cameras around the place. I asked the council if we could see them but they’ve said that only the police are able to look at them.”
Jack says he plans to clean the truck up some more over the weekend, before returning to the road on Monday.
DBC Cartage has notified the police and is also offering a $1000 reward to anyone who can provide reliable information on the identity of the perpetrators.