You’d think that wouldn’t you?
I had a member of staff who lived 40 miles away from my office, I let him travel to work and back in his company T6 without charge.
He appeared in the office at 16:55 on a Friday night claiming he only had 20 miles left on his Adblue and what were we going to do about it?
I suggested that in future he topped it up sooner (to be fair I flipped out at him for being so stupid) he went to the nearest Halfords and brought himself 10 litres of Adblue, kept the receipt and topped it up himself so that he could get himself home.
In his rush to get home and feeling very inconvenienced about the vehicle ‘suddenly’ having to be topped up he then proceeds to put 10ltrs of Adblue in his diesel tank and then when the van conked out just half a mile or so up the road he then calls me expecting somebody to drop him off another van so he could get home.
£7000 of damage and in mitigation he claimed he didn’t know what he was doing and that nobody had trained him on how to fill the van correctly.
This guy was early 60’s and had rebuilt a classic Norton from scratch, so not exactly a dizzy blonde...
Never underestimate people’s stupidity.
Saying that this must be extremely frustrating would be an understatement. One might wonder if there may be some element of contempt. If you are allowing a vehicles use for private use free of charge. Does the employee declare that on his TAX or is that another freebie. Have I misunderstood. Obviously and justifiably you appear very vexed. Your discomfort is palpable. The way forward might be to ask for vehicles to be returned to base and you or a trustee checks over day to day maintenance, such as Ad-blue etc. Can you claim this sort of thing against any sort of insurance? Is it even possible to insure against this sort of thing? The only thing is, I would not mind betting that this guy feels extremely uncomfortable and will be feeling the whole World is looking at him accusingly. I would not like to be him. He may be very, very worried about his future. This is not very good for him or you. He is bound to be defensive, one may not see immediate contrition but inside he is likely to feel very bad. No doubt you are very concerned about the costs and how much future over-site you may need to exercise over staff, including training. Increased work and responsibility for you! It is how to manage these situations, that is so difficult and embarrassing for everyone. I certainly would not like to be any one of the people, in this situation.
I believe because there is obviously an increasing amount of incidents concerning AD-Blue. Some causing minor complications and cost. Others, like this case, catastrophic costs, complications and follow on implications including potential mental heath issues. That the manufacturers, have made very flawed engineering decisions and management of the whole Ad-Blue situation. It has been too hastily adopted. Probably because of pressure from governments. No matter how simple and strait forward the system, may seem to others, some do not find it so, evidently! This is not the first case we have read about on these pages of Ad-Blue in the diesel tank and it will not be the last either. We will not even hear about most of them because of catastrophe and the ridicule of know it all clever clog people who probably will unfortunately go on to make their own blunders in life that may have even further reaching consequences. Why, are Ad-Blue filler nozzles, even mounted next to fuel fillers. It is not an every day task that needs attending to. Far better if it was mounted within the engine bay. They developed systems to help prevent putting wrong fuel into some vehicles. This needs a similar or greater amount of thought. Many older people will never have come across Ad-blue systems, younger people may just take this sort of thing for granted and will refuse to see a problem. Until something is changed we will hear about more of this.
I am very sorry to hear about this.