Same day, same newsroom: first Cummins digs up the founder for a warm little corpsrate cuddle, then pivots straight into diesel fuel, DEF, oil drains and heavy-duty truck cost savings. Heritage in the morning. Combustion admin by lunch.
Cummins has had another one of those newsroom days where the mask slips because nobody in PR remembers to check what they posted five minutes earlier.
First came Clessie in retirement. A soft little founder hymn about Clessie Cummins after he left the company, tinkering with the PT Fuel System and the Jake brake, nearly getting flattened by a train in 1931, then turning the memory into another piece of diesel mythology.
A bit of sepia. A bit of genius-founder perfume. A bit of “legacy of ingenuity” warm milk before bedtime.
Then, before the coffin lid had even stopped creaking, Cummins rolled out the X15 piece.
Not hydrogen. Not battery electric. Not some brave clean-sheet future. Diesel fuel. Oil. DEF. Maintenance intervals. Total cost of ownership. Fleet uptime. Owner-operators. Heavy-duty trucks. The old machine, but with more careful fluid maths.
So there it is.
Cummins cracks Clessie’s coffin for the feel-good corpsorate cuddle, then uses the same newsroom cycle to sell the gospel of diesel efficiency.
Corpserate nostalgia before combustion optimisation.
The Founder Myth Gets Another Outing
Cummins loves wheeling Clessie out when the present needs a bit of embalming.
The article talks about his post-retirement inventions, the PT Fuel System and the compression release engine brake, better known as the Jake brake. It says the PT system became a defining feature of Cummins diesel engines for decades, and that Cummins bought Jacobs Manufacturing in 2022, bringing the Jake brake “home”.
Lovely.
The dead founder gets polished, posed and turned into a brand asset one more time.
There is no mystery to why Cummins does this. Clessie is safer than the present. Clessie does not have to answer questions about emissions settlements, Accelera pain, hydrogen write-downs, data-centre diesel backup, or why “Destination Zero” keeps standing next to a product catalogue full of engines, fuel systems and aftertreatment.
The dead are useful in corporate PR.
They do not contradict the copy.
Then The X15 Walks In Covered In DEF
Then comes the X15 piece, and suddenly all the heritage incense gives way to the real smell of the business.
Cummins frames it as a “broader view of efficiency”. In practice, that means diesel fuel, oil, diesel exhaust fluid, oil-drain intervals, duty cycles, maintenance events, downtime, and how fleets can squeeze more cost advantage out of heavy-duty diesel trucks.
This is not a side note. This is Cummins speaking its native language.
The article says DEF is required in newer diesel trucks with selective catalytic reduction systems to reduce emissions. It says Cummins’ X15 DEF use typically ranges from 3% to 5% of diesel fuel consumption. It runs the maths for a Class 8 truck using 15,000 gallons of diesel a year. It talks about 750 gallons of DEF. It talks about costs. It talks about fleets. It talks about keeping trucks productive over the long haul.
There is your future, apparently.
A spreadsheet, a diesel tank and a man explaining why the fluid bill could be better.
Destination Zero, Meet The Dipstick
This is the part Cummins can never quite hide.
The company wants the halo of transition while still feeding the old beast. It wants Clessie’s myth, Destination Zero’s slogan, Accelera’s costume jewellery and X15 diesel efficiency all sitting at the same table as if nobody can smell the contradiction.
But the newsroom tells on them.
A founder puff piece about diesel-era invention, followed by a heavy-duty diesel cost-control sermon, is not a coincidence. It is Cummins accidentally publishing its own bloodstream.
This company is not done with diesel. It is not emotionally detached from diesel. It is not merely managing a graceful transition away from diesel while angels hum over a hydrogen brochure.
It is still lovingly counting the oil drains.
Still measuring DEF.
Still optimising the truck.
Still making sure the old machine keeps moving.
The Corpserate Two-Step
This is the Cummins two-step.
First, dig up the founder.
Then sell the diesel.
Use Clessie to make the past feel noble. Use the X15 to make the present feel efficient. Use “Destination Zero” to make investors feel like the future is behaving. Then hope nobody notices the same company is still elbow-deep in the fluids of heavy-duty combustion.
TCAP notices.
The order matters. The optics matter. The absurdity matters.
Because this is not just nostalgia. It is brand laundering with a headstone. Cummins takes the dead founder, runs him through the newsroom, then points readers toward another article about keeping diesel trucks cheaper, cleaner-ish, and productive over the long haul.
One hand on the coffin lid.
The other on the fleet invoice.
The Old Machine Is Not Dead
Cummins can talk transition all it wants. It can polish Clessie until he shines. It can file diesel efficiency under innovation. It can say “fluid economy” with the solemnity of a priest at a baptism.
The truth is simpler.
The old machine is not dead.
Cummins is not burying it.
Cummins is servicing it.
And when the newsroom runs out of fresh virtue, it cracks open the founder’s coffin, sprinkles a little heritage dust over the diesel catalogue, and calls the smell innovation.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project