Cummins has spent 2026 discovering that names are dangerous things to leave lying around a newsroom. TCAP found the case-study cupboard and turned more than 200 customer names into research leads. Two recent case studies we examined then arrived without the customer’s name. Meanwhile, ordinary living employees increasingly appear as John T., Sergio B. and Collins N. Fortunately, Cummins has found a workforce considerably less likely to complain about being indexed. They are dead. Today’s fresh newsroom offering is another trip back into the Clessie years. Welcome to Life at the Company. Or, given the current editorial strategy, Death at the Company.
Another Fucking Corpse Gets A Newsroom Slot
Cummins published another historical piece on 17 August.
The URL tells us where the shovel went this time:
Clessie’s engineering partner.
Of course it did.
Today is also the anniversary of Clessie Cummins’ death. He died on 17 August 1968 after spending the day working in his shop in California.
So the modern Cummins newsroom has marked the occasion by heading back into company history again.
There is nothing inherently wrong with corporate history. Clessie Cummins was an extraordinary engineer. TCAP has never needed to pretend otherwise. His life contains more genuine invention, risk and personality than six months of modern Cummins copy about “purpose”, “journeys”, “impact” and somebody discovering collaboration in a meeting room.
The interesting thing is not that Cummins remembers its founder.
It is how increasingly fucking comfortable the newsroom appears around people who cannot Google themselves.
Life At The Company Has A Living-Person Problem
Cummins has an editorial category called Life at the Company.
That used to sound cheerful.
Now look at the modern people stories.
John T.
Kim T.
Sergio B.
Collins N.
Perfectly nice people, presumably. TCAP has no quarrel with any of them simply for appearing in corporate copy.
But notice the treatment.
First name.
Initial.
Job.
Approved quote.
Corporate values.
Smile for the photographer.
Surname stays in the drawer.
Senior executives are different, obviously. Cummins can still tell investors exactly who Jennifer Rumsey, Susan Cleaver, Brad Sutton or another vice-president is when the disclosure requires a proper name. The coyness appears most useful lower down the food chain, where a wholesome employee profile could otherwise become another searchable entrance into the company.
That is sensible reputation management.
It is also fucking funny after TCAP spent months demonstrating exactly what happens when Cummins gives us names.
The Case Study Horse Already Bolted
The customer side tells the same story more loudly.
TCAP found Cummins’ enormous Case Studies archive and started going through it.
Hundreds of commercial relationships.
Customers.
Projects.
Locations.
Engines.
Testimonials.
Enough names to keep Customer Corner stocked until somebody in Indiana retires the fucking server.
We extracted more than 200 customer names and started checking the other side of their corporate histories.
Then came the bloodbath.
Regulators.
Pollution.
Litigation.
Workplace scandals.
Corruption.
Safety failures.
Procurement baggage.
All connected back to Cummins by the most inconvenient source imaginable:
Cummins itself.
Soon afterwards, we started noticing something different.
One Elko mining case study contained wonderfully specific financial claims but no customer name.
Then came the German road-rail case study. Cummins omitted the company name while helpfully leaving Moritz Engelhardt’s full name, country, industry, project description and virtually every other clue needed to identify ZAGRO.
That was less anonymity than a pub quiz.
Still, the direction was obvious.
Stop handing TCAP easy customer names.
Bit fucking late.
The horse has not merely bolted. TCAP photographed it, indexed it, wrote down its employer and started checking Companies House.
So Cummins Goes Somewhere Safer
And where is safer than history?
February brought The People Who Built Cummins: Clessie Cummins’ Early Days.
April brought Clessie And The War.
May brought Clessie In Retirement.
June brought William Glanton Irwin in The Man Who Turned Vision Into Reality.
July dug out Donovan Joel “Don” Cummins.
Now August has another Clessie-era engineering story.
There is a rhythm developing.
Dead founder.
Dead financier.
And dead family.
Old machinery.
Historic photographs.
Safe quotations.
Nobody involved is about to wake up, discover TCAP has written a category around them and ring Communications asking why their surname is ranking beside a disability-discrimination blog.
That is a considerable editorial advantage.
The dead are famously relaxed about search-engine optimisation.
Clessie Is Better Copy Anyway
There is another problem for modern Cummins.
Clessie makes the current company look fucking boring.
The bloke left school with roughly an eighth-grade education, worked as a mechanic, built engines, crossed America promoting diesel, bolted one into a Packard, nearly launched himself into a train, invented things in retirement and eventually developed technology that became the Jake Brake.
Modern Cummins gives us:
“Leading With Purpose.”
Clessie drove machinery until something nearly killed him and then spent twenty years thinking about how to stop it happening again.
Different era.
Different prose.
And a different appetite for actual engineering.
The contrast becomes particularly awkward in 2026 because the company carrying his name is simultaneously explaining why diesel and natural gas remain economically attractive, riding a data-centre generator boom and keeping Destination Zero alive as an umbrella over whatever part of the portfolio is still selling.
Clessie experimented because the machine needed improving.
Modern Cummins has a communications department to explain why the existing machine was part of the plan all along.
Destination Zero Meets Destination 1968
That is where today’s grave digging becomes more than harmless nostalgia.
Cummins has spent years selling the future.
Hydrogen.
Electrolysers.
Fuel cells.
Zero emissions.
Destination Zero.
Then the hydrogen economics deteriorated. Cummins stopped pursuing new commercial electrolyser activity, sold its low-pressure fuel-cell business and cited weaker hydrogen-adoption expectations.
Meanwhile, the current commercial story became much more familiar.
Diesel engines.
Natural gas.
Mining.
Power generation.
Data centres.
Large engines.
Shareholder returns.
The future got expensive, so the newsroom discovered the past.
Suddenly the founder’s workshop is useful again.
Old diesel ingenuity photographs beautifully when the current strategic message has become considerably less revolutionary than the branding once suggested.
Destination Zero still hangs above the door.
Behind it, the cash register is ringing for gensets.
And beside it, somebody has opened the archive.
Reactionary Mode Has Better Filing Cabinets
This is why TCAP keeps talking about Reactionary Mode.
Cummins changes.
TCAP notices.
We found the case-study archive and turned its customers into targets.
New case studies became coy about customers.
We repeatedly tore into syrupy employee stories.
Living employees increasingly appear behind first names and initials.
We started examining the modern strategy in real time.
Cummins keeps feeding the newsroom with history, machinery and people who have been unavailable for comment since before most of the current board was born.
Again, TCAP does not need a leaked Communications memo to notice what the output actually looks like.
You can call it heritage.
We can call it an increasingly fucking safe editorial environment.
Dead men do not have LinkedIn profiles to scrutinise.
Dead men do not produce Employment Tribunal claims.
And dead men do not have current employers, current colleagues, current grievances or current regulatory files.
Most importantly, dead men do not complain when Lee Thompson appears directly underneath them on Google.
Death At The Company
Perhaps Cummins should rename the section.
Life at the Company now feels unnecessarily ambitious.
The living get initials.
Customers lose names.
The dead get full biographies.
Clessie has had more newsroom resurrection work this year than some current Cummins technologies.
And, in fairness, he deserves the attention.
Clessie Cummins was an engineer.
He built things.
He broke things.
Nearly killed himself testing things.
He changed things when they did not work.
That final concept may be unfamiliar inside the modern company bearing his surname.
Because when something goes wrong at today’s Cummins, the preferred engineering discipline appears rather different.
Do not admit the failure.
Do not correct the record.
Change the presentation.
Move the labels.
Remove a customer name.
Shorten an employee surname.
Open the archive.
Find somebody safely dead.
Publish.
TCAP will notice anyway.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Cummins – Clessie’s Engineering Partner
- Cummins – The People Who Built Cummins: Clessie Cummins’ Early Days
- Cummins – The People Who Built Cummins: Clessie And The War
- Cummins – Clessie In Retirement
- Cummins – The Man Who Turned Vision Into Reality
- Cummins – Leading With Purpose: How John T. Creates Impact Through Empathy
- Cummins – Powered By Purpose: Meet Sergio B.
- Cummins – “I Can See My Work Come To Life”: Collins N. On Making An Impact