Trucker Rolando Denova Jr. 31, from San Antonio, Texas submitted a lawsuit against the San Antonio truck service after a truck went missing on their premises. He demands $2 million in damages in a lawsuit against Doggett Freightliner South Texas LLC and a related business.
Rolando Denova left his truck, a white 2017 Freightliner Cascadia, at the service facility two days before Thanksgiving in 2021. His truck needed a transmission oil change. Three Fuel injector lines were not working properly, and replacing them was necessary. Denova planned not to work for the holiday but spend time with his family, therefore he decided to leave the truck for repairs.
Doggett Freightliner is a company consisting of 13 dealerships in South and Central Texas and Arkansas. This company is part of Leslie Doggett Industries, one of Houston’s nine largest private companies. Hearst Newspaper announced that the revenue of this company in 2021 was $1.9 billion.
The truck was purchased and used in 2019 in Kentucky. Its price was $31,000. Denova paid $20,000 immediately and paid the rest in monthly installments.
When handing the truck to the service, Denova received a “tracking number”.
After seven days, a Doggett Freightliner employee asked him on the phone if he had picked up his truck. The employee said they couldn’t find it in their service. Denova did not take his truck.
It was two more days before the next call from the service department where they told him that the truck was not in their service department. According to Doggett Freightliner, the security camera footage shows the truck “safely pulled into the back lot by their agents” on November 23, 2021.
Doggett Freightliner did not release the camera footage to Denova following his request to personally view the security camera footage. Without explanation or apology, they referred him to the police.
The owner of the Freightliner Cascadia, Roland Denova, reported the truck missing to the San Antonio Police Department on December 8th, 2021. The FBI’s National Crime Information Center and the Texas Crime Information Center were immediately notified of the truck’s disappearance.
Denova was still paying off the truck when it disappeared. In addition to the vehicle, an additional $17,000 worth of property was also missing. Since the truck did have GPS tracking installed, someone had to disable this GPS before pulling the truck from the lot.
Roland Denova is an independent owner-operator and long-distance truck driver. While on the road, he lives in the truck. For him, the loss of the truck is the loss of a job that brought him $5,500 a week. The truck was supposed to be Denova’s initial investment for the development of a private trucking company. With its disappearance, the possibility of developing a private business also disappeared. Due to the pandemic, the prices have increased, and Denova can’t afford to buy another truck.
Denova has sent job offers to various trucking companies, which are still waiting for a response.
At the moment when Roland Denova is trying to solve the case of the missing truck and deal with unemployment, his second daughter was born, so he now has to support his two daughters, aged 4 and nine months. His family helps him, and his modest savings come through.
On January 5, Denova filed a lawsuit against a San Antonio truck service after his truck went missing in the state District Court in San Antonio Texas. The lawsuit is for breach of contract, deceptive trade practices, and negligence. He is demanding $2 million.
