West Fargo man's trailer with $30k of equipment stolen from job site

A West Fargo contractor says he feels violated after $30,000 worth of his equipment was stolen from a trailer overnight.

“It's just kind of hard to, hard to take. I've never felt so, so helpless,” Delan Schmidt said.

Schmidt, who owns Dakota Carpentry Inc., was on his office computer Friday cataloging the more than 250 pieces of equipment that he reported stolen.

“I don't know who would've taken it,” Schmidt said. “Somebody must've seen us working there. We've been working for the past three days steady.”

Schmidt’s been in business for nearly 20 years and he acknowledged that this was a tough loss to take.

“It's all our carpentry tools. Saws, hammers, screws, all of our supplies,” Schmidt said.

The $30,000 worth of equipment, which's his estimate, was stolen from a trailer he bought less than seven months ago.

His company was building a garage for the south Fargo home of Paula Weiler located at the intersection of 15th St S and 8th Ave S.

Weiler said she saw the trailer at around midnight in front of her house. When the trailer wasn't there Friday morning, she suspected an employee may have taken it.

“Honestly, we've lived here for 20 years and nothing like this has ever happened to us,” Weiler said. “We've worked with him plenty of times and he's a great man, and he does really good work and he's a very stand up person, so I feel really bad that this happened for him.”

Schmidt said a Fargo police officer told him that the thief might be driving the trailer to the Twin Cities to sell it.

Schmidt's planning to revisit that south Fargo neighborhood to check if any homes had surveillance cameras. While he isn't hopeful he'll get the trailer back, Schmidt said it's better than throwing up his hands in defeat.