The $100k mistake, and why nobody got yelled at
Three months after we sent the truck out, the customer rang. The motor had failed. Coolant in the sump, a dropped liner.
That was odd. The liner had measured perfectly in spec. Liners don't just drop. We put it down to bad luck.
A month later he came into the workshop and asked for me. He wanted a one on one about his truck. I was fresh out of hospital from a hysterectomy and my business manager could have handled it. I went out the front anyway.
He told me flat. We'd left the rocker gear loose, the engine had failed because of it, and we'd be replacing his engine.
I was gobsmacked. Our team is meticulous. Standing there, I knew he was wrong. I told him we'd view the engine and get the reports so we could sort it out for him, and I meant it. But I'd already made up my mind.
What I'd already decided
Scott and I talked it through. We both had the same feeling. The customer's driver had put it into the wrong gear going down a hill. It happens, and it causes exactly that kind of damage.
Scott drove out to look at it. The truck was at a dealership he used to work at, so he knew the crew and could go over it properly with them. He took photos, checked everything they were pointing at, and came back.
Something had been left loose.
Not the rocker gear. A part that should have come pre-set, and that isn't normally part of a head replacement check. Our tradesman had done these rebuilds before, a couple of them alongside Scott. This time we were away. He was a bit nervous, but he had the procedures and he'd done it before. The head replacement itself went beautifully. He finished the day before we got back. Scott test drove it several times. We sent it out.
He probably should have run a spanner over that part. He didn't. Now the engine needs replacing which is a 100K mission.
What we did with him
He was upset. Of course he was.
We didn't yell. We didn't tell him we were disappointed. He wasn't punished.
We are a team. Mistakes happen. If the knowledge that would have saved that engine wasn't in the technical data and wasn't in our procedures, it wasn't his to know. The buck stops with us. Nobody should be punished for a gap in what the owners wrote down.
A good friend of ours who works solely on these engines told us the same thing happened to him last month. He's 30 years in. If it can catch him, it can catch anyone.
What we changed
We wrote it down. There is now a trade reference document in our workshop covering head replacements, rebuilds and the trucks we work on. It holds the things you won't find in the manufacturer's technical data. The stuff that lives in an old mechanic's head. Every team member can open it.
That document might save an engine one day. It cost $100k to write.
The problem, plainly
Plenty of workshops would have handled that differently. Yelling. Silence. Docking pay. Quietly deciding that tradesman never gets left alone on a big job again.
Every one of those responses teaches your team the same lesson. Mistakes get hidden. The next time a spanner isn't run over something, nobody tells you. You find out three months later, from the customer, out the front.
What to do instead
Get the facts before you get the feeling. I got that backwards. I'd decided it was the driver before Scott had taken a single photo. Be the owner who says "we'll look at it" and means it.
Then ask what the person needed to know, and whether it existed anywhere in your business. If it didn't, the mistake is yours. Fix that first.
Write it down somewhere the whole team can find. Not in your head, not in your business partner's head. In a document.
Then tell the person. Look them in the eye and say mistakes happen, we're a team, here's what we're changing. They'll remember that longer than any bollocking.