diff --git a/src/java/META-INF/services/org.apache.xmlgraphics.image.loader.spi.ImagePreloader b/src/java/META-INF/services/org.apache.xmlgraphics.image.loader.spi.ImagePreloader
index b690eb2..5d8f324 100644
--- a/src/java/META-INF/services/org.apache.xmlgraphics.image.loader.spi.ImagePreloader
+++ b/src/java/META-INF/services/org.apache.xmlgraphics.image.loader.spi.ImagePreloader
@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox.PreloaderPDF
-org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox.PreloaderImageRawData
\ No newline at end of file
+org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox.PreloaderImageRawData
+org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox.LastResortPreloaderPDF
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/pdfbox/LastResortPreloaderPDF.java b/src/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/pdfbox/LastResortPreloaderPDF.java
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b8b2c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/pdfbox/LastResortPreloaderPDF.java
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+/*
+ * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+ * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+ * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+ * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+ * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+ * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ *
+ *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ *
+ * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+ * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+ * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+ * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+ * limitations under the License.
+ */
+
+/* $Id$ */
+package org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox;
+
+import java.io.IOException;
+
+import javax.imageio.stream.ImageInputStream;
+
+/**
+ * Last resort PDF preloader for PDFs with data before the header
+ */
+public class LastResortPreloaderPDF extends PreloaderPDF {
+    protected byte[] getHeader(ImageInputStream in, int size) throws IOException {
+        byte[] header = new byte[1024];
+        long startPos = in.getStreamPosition();
+        int len = in.read(header);
+        in.seek(startPos);
+        String s = new String(header, "US-ASCII");
+        if (len > 0 && s.contains(PDF_HEADER)) {
+            return PDF_HEADER.getBytes("US-ASCII");
+        }
+        return new byte[0];
+    }
+
+    public int getPriority() {
+        return DEFAULT_PRIORITY * 3;
+    }
+}
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/pdfbox/PreloaderPDF.java b/src/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/pdfbox/PreloaderPDF.java
index 94db567..871bd1f 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/pdfbox/PreloaderPDF.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/pdfbox/PreloaderPDF.java
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@
 public class PreloaderPDF extends AbstractImagePreloader {
 
     /** PDF header text */
-    private static final String PDF_HEADER = "%PDF-";
+    protected static final String PDF_HEADER = "%PDF-";
 
     /** {@inheritDoc} */
     public ImageInfo preloadImage(String uri, Source src, ImageContext context)
diff --git a/test/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/PreloaderPDFTestCase.java b/test/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/PreloaderPDFTestCase.java
index ca936ee..a50c324 100644
--- a/test/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/PreloaderPDFTestCase.java
+++ b/test/java/org/apache/fop/render/pdf/PreloaderPDFTestCase.java
@@ -21,15 +21,18 @@
 import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
 import java.io.DataOutputStream;
 import java.io.File;
+import java.io.FileInputStream;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.io.InputStream;
 
 import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
+import javax.imageio.stream.ImageInputStream;
 import javax.imageio.stream.MemoryCacheImageInputStream;
 
 import org.junit.Assert;
 import org.junit.Test;
 
+import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;
 import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
 
 import org.apache.xmlgraphics.image.loader.ImageException;
@@ -39,11 +42,10 @@
 import org.apache.xmlgraphics.image.loader.impl.ImageRendered;
 
 import org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox.ImagePDF;
+import org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox.LastResortPreloaderPDF;
 import org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox.PreloaderImageRawData;
 import org.apache.fop.render.pdf.pdfbox.PreloaderPDF;
 
-
-
 public class PreloaderPDFTestCase {
 
     @Test
@@ -84,4 +86,16 @@
         doc.save(new ByteArrayOutputStream());
         img.close();
     }
+
+    @Test
+    public void testLastResortPreloaderPDF() throws Exception {
+        ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
+        bos.write("xx".getBytes("UTF-8"));
+        IOUtils.copy(new FileInputStream(PDFBoxAdapterTestCase.ROTATE), bos);
+        InputStream pdf = new ByteArrayInputStream(bos.toByteArray());
+        ImageInputStream inputStream = ImageIO.createImageInputStream(pdf);
+        ImageSource imageSource = new ImageSource(inputStream, "", true);
+        ImageInfo imageInfo = new LastResortPreloaderPDF().preloadImage("", imageSource, new DefaultImageContext());
+        Assert.assertEquals(imageInfo.getMimeType(), "application/pdf");
+    }
 }