We had one mob of servicemen at site try to replace the coolant in a cat 783 dump truck
They couldn't find any cat coolant but they found some hitachi coolant ( well it was red and really thin) so they put that in.....
I don't have a tale that expensive, but funny none the less.
One of my old employers kept motor oil, coolant and transmission fluid on the shelf for both the company trucks as well as the shops forklifts. They never had a problem with stuff vanishing until shortly after they hired this one shifty eyed dude (we'll call him Earl).
One day, the truck driver was pulling into the company lot where he saw "Earl" loading what looked like the case of motor oil that the driver had picked up at the parts store
that very morning before he had to go out on the road.
By the time he had backed the company rig into the loading dock and got out, Earl had his trunk shut and was making tracks for the other building. When our driver confronted him, Earl denied it furiously. He also refused to open his trunk.
When I got back to the shop (was spending most of my time on the road at that point), I got dragged into it by our truck driver, who didn't like the names he'd been called and wanted to set out a trap for the little mouth breathing ingrate (I'd already had a run in with Earl as well), well, you could say I was all ears.
We didn't have any trouble getting permission to store the replacement supplies in the office under lock and key (one of the upsides of working for a cheap SOB); then we baited the trap.
1] Bait tranny fluid. 1/8 quart Dextron III, 7/8 quart DOT 3 brake fluid. Made 8 quarts, put back in a case box, and put on shelf.
2] Bait Shell Rotela 15w/40 diesel motor oil (bought in 4-1gal. cases) 4 gallons of used Aeon 4000 rotary screw compressor oil. Truck driver had been saving the empties for target practice; oh, man, they got used now!!!
3] Bait anti freeze. Hydrochloric acid (from the waste treatment system of our plating line) with just enough ethylene glycol to tint it green. 2 gallon jugs, marked "premixed" and put on shelf.
Now, we sat back and we waited; over the course of the next month,
ALL the bait vanished; just like it had for the previous couple of months since Earl got hired. It didn't take long.
It was already common knowledge that ol' Earl was a cheap bastard and didn't trust anyone to work on his rides; he also drove some really crappy rides. The fake trans. fluid got his truck first; that leak in the tranny cooler in the radiator had suddenly gotten a LOT worse (gee, I wonder
WHY?). "T" said he heard Earl complaining to someone that he had to pour most of a case of fluid into it to get to work, and he was going to hit the junk yard for another radiator after work; he didn't make it to the junk yard.
Next day he drove his car, and he was
PISSED!!!! His mood didn't get any better when he came out to eat his lunch in his car, and found a green puddle under under it (busily chewing it's way into the asphalt, I might add). He fought that one for a couple of days before the head gasket gave out.
I was out on the road when all this came down; the first day I was back at the shop for the entire day, "T" filled me in. One of the obvious things about Earl, was that he was allergic to real work, if it wasn't for himself. I happened to be stripping down the transmission out of a good sized milling machine on the bench, with "T" as my assistant when Earl wandered over to rubberneck; (did I mention that his personal hygene needed work, too?) "T" chose that moment to change the subject.
"Hey Pat, I still haven't found those 4 gallon jugs of swamp oil". ME "the one's you had me fill for you, so you could nuke the swamp behind the building?" T "Yeah. I know where I put them, but when I got back at the end of the day, they were gone." ME "Well, I hope whoever took them doesn't run it thru any engines they care about." T "Why not?" ME "That was old screw compressor oil; mix that with regular motor oil, and you'll spin every bearing in the engine." T "How so?" ME "Their not compatible; go read the warning label on the bucket we filled the compressor out of." Suddenly, ol' Earl had pressing business out in the parking lot. I wonder why?
When He pulled out of the parking lot at the end of the day, his car sounded like crap; T and I both had the same idea and followed him out. He didn't make a right at the end of the driveway like normal; instead he made a beeline to the nearest quick change outlet.
We didn't have any trouble with theft after that; at least until he got let go. 2 weeks after that, the shop got broken into (that's when I lost all my Snap On hand tools). Needless to say, he didn't get caught with our tools, but he
DID get caught with a whole lot of tools and tooling from his
previous employer. So some justice was had, just not by me. Oh, well.
