A Royal Mail trolley loaded with three bags of parcels and letters was stolen in broad daylight when a postman briefly left it unattended during his delivery round in Newmarket, Suffolk.
The theft occurred in Periman Close between 11am and 11:05am on Saturday, October 18th, with the entire incident taking place in a five-minute window while the postal worker was presumably delivering to nearby addresses.
Suffolk Police are now searching for two people who were seen speeding off in a silver VW Caddy van immediately after the trolley was taken.
Another Day, Another Attack on Postal Workers
The brazen daylight theft represents yet another example of the vulnerability facing Royal Mail workers who are simply trying to do their jobs.
While the postman was presumably delivering mail to residents in the close, opportunistic thieves grabbed the entire trolley and made off with bags containing potentially hundreds of parcels and letters intended for the local community.
The incident comes amid a broader pattern of attacks and thefts targeting delivery drivers across the UK, from the beloved Evri driver in Swindon who was dragged down a road by van thieves to systematic theft problems at courier depots nationwide.
For postal workers, the dilemma is impossible: leave your trolley unattended while delivering to individual addresses and risk theft, or drag it to every single door and dramatically slow down your delivery round in ways that make meeting targets impossible.
The Customers Who’ll Never Get Their Mail
Somewhere in those three stolen bags are birthday cards, important documents, online orders, and correspondence that people are still waiting for – completely unaware that their mail was nicked from a trolley in Newmarket rather than being genuinely lost in Royal Mail’s network.
This creates a particular nightmare for both the postal worker involved and the customers affected. How do you explain to someone that their parcel isn’t late because of Royal Mail’s catastrophically poor delivery performance, but because it was physically stolen off a trolley during the delivery round?
For Royal Mail, already struggling with a £21 million fine from Ofcom for missing delivery targets and widespread service failures, this represents yet another black eye for a service that’s supposed to be universal and reliable.
What Happens to Stolen Mail?
The question facing everyone affected by this theft is simple: what happens now to those parcels and letters?
Given recent revelations about how Evri quietly sells “lost” parcels at auction houses rather than returning them to customers, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether genuinely stolen mail ends up in similar grey-market channels.
For the thieves, three bags of random parcels and letters represents a gamble – there might be valuable items mixed in with junk mail and birthday cards, but they won’t know until they’ve rifled through everything.
For customers waiting for items that were in those bags, at least there’s a documented police investigation and crime reference number, which should make compensation claims more straightforward than the usual “lost in our network” excuses that leave people fighting for basic liability cover.
The Stolen Royal Mail Trolley Investigation That Needs Your Help
Suffolk Police are appealing for anyone with information about the theft to come forward, particularly anyone who saw the silver VW Caddy van or has dashcam footage from Periman Close around 11am on October 18th.
Anyone with information should contact Suffolk Police quoting crime reference number 37/60414/25.
The fact that this happened in broad daylight on a Saturday morning suggests someone may have witnessed the theft or seen the van speeding away from the scene.
For postal workers across the UK, incidents like this create an impossible working environment where simply doing your job puts you at risk of theft, assault, or worse – all while working as self-employed contractors with minimal protection when things go wrong.
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