CONWAY, Mass (Reuters) - Police in Massachusetts on Sunday canceled a statewide search for a rental truck ending a hunt triggered by a tip from a nervous citizen on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Authorities located and identified a Penske truck they had been searching for and determined that its operators had been doing charitable work and that there was no threat or cause for alarm, a Boston police spokesman said.

On Saturday night, someone saw men loading 55-gallon drums with uncertain contents into the vehicle and called police, who, as a precaution, scrambled to find the truck.

Boston Police spokesman Eddie Crispin said the "be on the lookout," or BOLO, alert had been lifted by Sunday afternoon.

"They were able to locate the truck, and apparently it was a truck that was picking up charitable goods, donations, from different parts of the city," he said.

Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack in which hijacked commercial airplanes were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and a Pennsylvania field killing nearly 3,000 people.

(Reporting by Zach Howard; Editing by David Bailey and James B. Kelleher)