TORONTO — A team of armed thieves hijacked a tractor-trailer, took the driver and his partner on a three-hour joyride in a van, blindfolded, and then finally released the pair, unharmed, in a mall parking lot at the other end of Toronto.

The tractor-trailer has been recovered, but the load is still missing and York Regional Police say the armed thieves are still at large.

According to a police spokesman, the truck driver and his partner were in the truck at about half past midnight, at a Petro-Canada Station on the northbound side of Highway 400 early Tuesday morning. They were approached by two individuals, each carrying handguns, and forced to get out of the truck and into a minivan.

The truckers were blindfolded and then driven around for three hours, until they were finally released at a mall in the Kipling-Queensway part of the city, an area most truckers know for its huge intermodal trucking depot.

The trucker and his partner told police afterwards that while they were in the van they could hear their captors communicating on the cellphone with some other individuals who, presumably, had hijacked the tractor-trailer, and once they finished unloading it at some destination, the van drivers freed the truckers and fled.

The police did not state what was in the trailers but did say that it’s very worrisome because the thieves are armed, and therefore dangerous.

The investigation continues.