For the second time in more than two months, it was hit in Hoogeveen with the theft of Trucks. The trucks disappeared from a location on the AG Bellstraat from the transport company Dasko. “You feel robbed, this makes you suspicious. That is not a nice feeling,” says Ton Dasselaar, co-owner of Dasko from Almelo. The damage? More than seven tons.
On Sunday morning he woke up around 7 a.m. “Then you read the messages in the family app. At first we thought it was a joke, or that we had been hacked on Facebook,” Dasselaar looks back. “But then it turns out to be real. Then it is showering, clothes on and to Hoogeveen.”
It is the second time in two months that the company is struck by theft. At the beginning of December, thieves were already running away with two trucks. And these cases do not stand on their own, according to figures from the RDW.
Last year the number of truck thefts in the Netherlands was more than doubled compared to 2023. In the last year, 56 trucks were given up as stolen, last year there were no fewer than 124. More than a third was found. In 2023, more than half of the stolen trucks were found.
That happiness has not had that co-owner of Dasko Ton Dasselaar so far. He has not seen or heard about the trucks that were stolen in Hoogeveen in December. The four truck combinations that he lost in the two thefts were all equipped with GPS, but the systems were plotted by the thieves and therefore not to trace.
“The GPS has been made unclear. According to a private detective, the stolen cars first stood in a hall without GPS range,” says Dasselaar. “They would have done that because they needed a longer time to eliminate the tracking systems. And then later in the week they drive between normal freight traffic to the destination. Anyway, those are speculations.”
The entrepreneur knows that more trucks have been stolen lately. “In the first week of December there were several carriers with the same brands of trucks and trailers that were stolen. I think it is for trade, because there were no products in the trailers.”
Dasko has around 250 trucks. Since the theft, the company received many tips. That has not yet led to a solution to the case, but Dasselaar is hopeful that he will get his trucks back. “We’re trying to trace them. We’re not let go.”