The owner of an Ipswich transport company has appealed for help after one of his trailers and a dolly were stolen.
Mark Eastwell, who has been running Eastwells Haulage with his wife Robyn for 20 years, said the theft could leave the family business hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket.
A 2022 Moore white/red lead drop deck tipper and a 2022 Moore red tri dolly owned by Eastwells were taken from Pittsworth road train breakup pad in the Toowoomba region of Queensland between 10.30am on Friday October 6 and 10.30am on Sunday October 8.
The registration number on the trailer is YQ29QB, and the dolly is YQ30QB. Both the trailer and the dolly have Eastwells Haulage mudflaps.
“I don’t think the thief could have planned this far in advance,” Eastwell said.
“One of our drivers split his road train at the road train pad in Pittsworth on Friday morning, to go unload the trailers.
“The only reason he didn’t hook it back up was because he had to do a B-double load, so he just took his back two trailers and left his lead and dolly there.
“When he came back on Sunday morning to hook it back to the road train they were gone.
“It’s not like someone saw them sitting there for a long time and thought ‘Oh, they’ve been forgotten about, no-one will notice if I grab them.’ Within 36 hours they were gone.”
Eastwell says the trailer and dolly are worth about $200,000, and although insurance will cover the theft, he reckons he’ll still end up about $100,000 worse off if he doesn’t recover the stolen goods.
“Each year we have to pay a substantial amount to insurance if there were any claims so half of this will just come out of our pocket,” he explained.
“My wife and I are actually in the process of taking a bit of a step back with our business, and had made the tough decision to disperse all trucks and trailers in our fleet and move in a different direction.
“We’re still going to have our workshop, Eastwells will run as a loading agent. We’re just slowing down a bit.
“This trailer and dolly were actually sold to Richie Brothers, they were meant to be with them by this Friday.
“A new contract will have to be drawn up and everything if we don’t get them back.”
Eastwell has reported the theft to the police, and has some CCTV images of the truck that carted away the trailer and dolly.
He took to Facebook over the weekend to share the images along with details of the incident, and asked for anyone with any information to come forward.
“We have an image of the truck and there’s a stripe up the side which is sort of distinctive,” he continued.
“We’re getting a few photos coming in from people and we’ve checked a few of them out but we haven’t found the trailer and dolly yet.
“One theory is that we’ll find them somewhere just stripped out. There’s a lot of money in suspension and tyres alone. But everything has serial numbers on it so we’d try to track them down too.
“In this day and age, you wouldn’t think they’d be able to get away with something like that for too long.
“Hopefully people will keep a look out for us, surely someone out there must have seen something.”
If anyone has any information or comes across the trailer and dolly, you can call Mark on 0415 169 520 and contact the Queensland Police Service on 131 444.