Sucker truck stolen from Dunedin found in Christchurch

With its stickers stripped and a fresh lick of paint, a stolen Dunedin sucker truck has been discovered more than 350km away in Christchurch.

The truck was found empty on Olliviers Rd, in Phillipstown Christchurch, after it was stolen from Barry Dell Plumbing in Dunedin on Tuesday about 4.30am.

Police say they want to talk to a man named Jason Nash over the incident.

The distinctive truck made headlines after it was stolen and sighted up the South Island east coast. Confirmed sightings of the truck included a stop outside the Regina Lollies factory in Oamaru, and at sites in Timaru and Winchester. Christchurch was the last place it was spotted.

The business began to conduct its own detective work to piece together the tale of its missing truck. That included obtaining footage of the offender, copies of Eftpos receipts, collating confirmed sightings, and even photographic evidence of where the thief dumped diesel after he mistakenly filled the petrol-only vehicle.

Barry Dell Plumbing estimator Alan Sorrell said police had informed him the truck was found with flat tyres, missing glass, removed stickers and the truck tank had been repainted ‘‘very amateurishly’’. He said police had the 1986 Nissan Atlas towed to a secure location to have it fingerprinted.

‘‘We are very relieved, one of our employees, he’s been in a state of shock since it was stolen, the little sucker truck was one of his babies,’’ Sorrell said.

The name Jason Nash, which was unknown to the business, was supplied to the company, which was passed on to police, he said.

Sorrell said video footage showed two men were involved in the theft. One jumped into the yard while another stayed outside the gate.

They were there for almost two hours when they ‘‘busted the driver window’’ of the truck and are believed to have hotwired the truck, he said. They then rammed the locked gate to escape.

‘‘The poor old sucker truck, if I was to say to any of the guys working here you have to drive it to Christchurch they would just turn round and hand their notice in. The thing does 80kmh flat out, downhill, empty with the wind behind it. It has nothing of any value on it. I mean the batteries might be worth a bit or the pump assembly, but other than that it has one sole purpose in Dunedin, and that is it goes into the basement of centre city New World to suck out the sumps.’’

Anyone with information on Nash’s whereabouts should contact Dunedin police on (03) 471 4800.