A Carroll County man who had been shot several times died early yesterday in the parking lot of the cement-hauling company where he worked near Westminster, according to Maryland State Police.

Scott E. Shipley, 27, of the 1900 block of Blacks Schoolhouse Road in Silver Run was pronounced dead at Gross Trucking in the 400 block of Lucabaugh Mill Road, police said.

He had been shot in the upper body, police said. No suspect had been identified, no weapon had been recovered and no motive was known, said police, who were seeking information from the public about the homicide.

Carroll L. Gross Jr., 46, owner of the company, told the police that he arrived about 5 a.m. and saw the truck assigned to Shipley running and in its parking space at the back of the lot, said Maj. Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman. Gross said he found his employee behind the truck on the ground and unresponsive, and called for help.

Some of the truck drivers who had been to the trucking company and left before the shooting did not see anything unusual, police said. It was normal for them to arrive early to drive their trailer loads of cement to Hagerstown and Washington.

A businessman at Cranberry Industrial Park who was friendly with Shipley said it was the victim's last day on the job, and he was to begin working for his father's trucking company, Herbert R. Shipley Inc. in Sykesville.

"I knew him," said Larry Stephan of Eagle Automotive. "He was a good guy. He never really said a whole lot, but I saw him every day when he was driving for Gross."

At Gross Trucking yesterday, Shipley's co-workers seemed stunned. They hovered near the entrance, smoking and talking quietly. The parking lot was cordoned off by crime-scene tape. Behind the warehouse where Gross operates his business, several transport trucks were still in the lot, along with some junked vans and cars.

Shipley was "very quiet," said Kimberly A. Gross, 44, of Westminster, wife of the owner.

"He was a hard worker, but he was easygoing, not a troublemaker," she said. "He smiled all the time, but he did keep to himself."

Shipley had been employed by her husband since April as one of six drivers who hauled cement, Gross said. His schedule varied.

William T. Sommerville owns Custom Color Shack, next door to Gross Trucking. His custom and collision repair shop has been there about eight years, he said, and "backs up against the parking lot ... where nobody really goes except the trucks. It's kind of isolated."

In Silver Run, no one answered the door at the Shipley residence. The house overlooks a quiet residential neighborhood with several farms. The Pennsylvania border lies 2 miles away.

Next-door neighbor Doris M. Diehl, 67, reacted with shock to the news of Shipley's death.

"Oh, my God!" she said. "He was a very nice young man."

Diehl said she had lived there for six years, and Shipley had moved in soon afterward. She said he had been married within the past year. His wife has two young boys from a previous marriage, she said.

She would see Shipley doing yardwork, Diehl said, but "he wasn't home much. They stayed pretty well to themselves."

Police asked anyone with information to call the Westminster barracks at 410-386-3000.