An oily layer of subterfuge

Sometimes the transport industry can read like a remarkably entertaining thriller. From visits to the ‘Mashonisa’ to siphoning diesel during breaks, JIM WARD has seen it all.

Few things work properly in Mzansi, but garnishee orders have long been an exception. Town sheriffs have regularly delivered court orders to debit monies at source from drivers in repayment arrears or owing maintenance. Occasionally, family has acted against family, with even aunts suing nephews as garnishees.

It has tended to be the same employees every time: people walking a tightrope to balance income against expenses, even with abundant overtime. Trouble always looms when employees treat overtime as a given, banking on the dangerous assumption that they can repay debts and garnishees from this overtime.

When demand decreased in the past, transport activity would diminish, reducing the need for weekend/late deliveries and overtime. A brief downturn left these tightrope walkers financially exposed – forced to choose between debt repayment and groceries, constantly demanding overtime, and bitterly unhappy.

Sometimes, they would borrow from Mashonisas (a Zulu term for loan sharks) at punitive interest rates, even handing over driving licences or IDs as collateral. It’s a painful lesson, treating the impermanent as a constant, but they never learnt.  

Fuel consumption calculations can similarly snare the unwary. Operators often use average fleet consumption as a reliable guideline for the fuel used on specific routes. This figure can easily become a number carved in stone: never challenged and faithfully transferred from one budget to the next as accepted fuel consumption. But the risks herein are substantial.

Let’s assume 47.5 litres/100 km has become the “standard” for a particular combination, route, and load. This is carried from one costing to the next as an accurate fuel consumption rate for that type of operation, but is this really the case?

Even when something seemingly insignificant changes, it can have a drastic effect. Any number of changes is possible. Drivers get transferred; an instructor starts conducting in-cab driver training, or drives the route and sets a fuel consumption template. Fuel probes may be installed to provide accurate live fuel level reporting. Inexplicably, the same fleet – hauling identical loads over the same route – suddenly starts to average 43.5 litres/100 km. 

So what has really changed? When placed under closer observation, those trucks could no longer stop at their accustomed siphoning spot under the trees outside Wonderfontein. The battered containers tied onto chassis rails to collect fuel from the return lines had to disappear. Sucking diesel from tanks during “driver breaks” had to cease…

That benchmark of 47.5 litres/100 km, unbeknownst to the fleet operator, was supporting an illicit “provident fund” involving trusted employees and systemic fuel theft.

Historically, skimming fuel became such a standard routine that a layer of dishonesty was included in operational budgets. As long as sufficient drivers were involved and regular theft continued, any short-lived improvement could be explained away by tailwinds, test tyres, or reduced traffic.

One honest driver’s performance can easily be obliterated by averages. If you steal 40 litres from a trip requiring 420 litres, you may get caught, but if you skim 15 litres at a time off hundreds of trips each using around 500 litres, you can evade detection.

The cold hard truth is that what you considered to be normal was abnormal and what you believed to be true was false; it was a consumption rate incorporating years of organised theft. In the shadows was an entire cartel exploiting certain routes using tanks, pumps, pipes, trucks, and labour. They were highly adept at stealing your diesel and very efficient at selling it. 

With flow meters hidden in the engine harness, modern trucks transmit live consumption data in litres/hour, making theft easier to spot. Old trucks never had this technology, so it had to be retrofitted.

When you identify a rapid drop in fuel level without a corresponding engine rpm or distance travelled, you have probably stumbled upon fuel theft. Don’t accept data at face value; scrutinise those revered “standards” for authenticity and accuracy before ever trusting them.