AUGUSTA -- When someone steals from an ice cream delivery truck, one might think what was stolen was chocolate, vanilla or strawberry.

Most people wouldn't think of stealing the truck's hood.

But that's what apparently happened to a GMC delivery truck owned by Hershey's Ice Cream in Augusta. When branch manager Dave Tracy arrived at work at 8:30 a.m. Monday, he said he discovered that a massive fiberglass hood had been taken from one of the company delivery trucks.

"When I saw the hood was gone, I knew something was up," Tracy said. "Work on a truck would not have been done without me knowing about it."

An employee had been at the warehouse around 5 p.m. Sunday, who later told Tracy everything at the site was fine.

The fiberglass hood is 71/2 feet wide, 6 feet long and 4 feet tall.

"It's not exactly small," Tracy said. "Even if you had a pickup truck, it would be hard to carry off."

The pins used to bolt the hood to the truck had been removed and the headlight cables had been cleanly cut, leading Tracy to believe "whoever did this knew what they were doing" and the theft was not a prank.

Nothing else was reported stolen.

Tracy has worked for Hershey's Ice Cream for 23 years.

In that duration, he said, "nothing like this has ever happened."

"People would try to get in the back of the trucks, you know, to steal the ice cream," Tracy said with a chuckle.

The warehouse on Riverside Drive has six trucks that deliver throughout Maine and northern New Hampshire. In the winter, trucks are housed in a garage when not in use, but during the warmer months, Tracy admitted, they sit on the lot out in the open.

"We keep the trucks locked up at night and on weekends, and take out any ice cream in the back," he said.

The theft is highly unusual, Augusta police Lt. J. Chris Read said.

"Normally, people don't just steal part of a car or truck," Read said. "Usually, they just take the whole thing."

Read said the culprit more than likely needed a hood identical to the one on the GMC and saw an opportunity with the truck in the Hershey's Ice Cream lot.

"I would say the whole thing is very unusual," Read said. "Someone must have had the particular need for it."

Needy culprit or not, Tracy hopes the hood will be recovered soon.

"I'd like to come to work tomorrow and see it sitting out here in the lot," he said. "It would be nice if the person who took it would return it to us."

Tracy said employees would probably start parking the trucks in the garage every night and perhaps installing security cameras.

Hershey's Ice Cream was founded by Jacob Hershey and his four brothers in 1894. Though the brothers share the same surname and home state of Pennsylvania as the chocolate tycoon Milton S. Hershey, the families are not related, nor are the two companies.

Meghan V. Malloy -- 623-3811 Ext. 431

mmalloy@centralmaine.com