Cummins Accountability : Repeating It Won’t Bury TCAP

Cummins has invited business students to think critically about industrial growth. That is a brave fucking invitation from a company whose own paperwork makes such entertaining course material. Its newsroom can supply the engines, mines and superyachts. The US regulators can supply the $1.675 billion emissions settlement. Put both reading lists on the desk and somebody might learn something the sponsor had not planned to teach.

Five articles published on 28 and 29 September provide the latest instalment. There is a mining anniversary, a sustainability explainer, a versatile engine, a yacht dealer and a competition for tomorrow’s executives. Everything has somewhere to go, something to sell or a glorious future to describe. Even the students arrive as potential contributors to the next round of growth.

Meanwhile, “accountability” keeps catching my eye in Cummins material. Two employees’ LinkedIn posts surfaced for me last week, and the website offers plenty more. If anyone thinks enough company-approved uses of that word will bury The Cummins Accountability Project, they have allowed this particular pain in the arse far too much time to develop. TCAP now has an archive. A fresh paragraph of corporate reassurance arrives alongside that history, however much its authors might prefer an empty page.

The Market Has Been Less Enthusiastic

Cummins shares closed at $517.84 on Monday 28 September, down 1.38% that day and 29.81% below their 52-week high of $737.76, reached on 18 June. Tuesday brought a 0.68% recovery to $521.37. The shares still sat roughly 29% below the June peak.

Perhaps that explains some of the appetite for another bucket of good-news sludge. With a share chart like that, a business might appreciate a few photographs of successful customers and promising students. Publicity can produce confidence on demand, at least until somebody closes the browser and opens their investment account.

The newsroom has the easier job. It can select the yacht, the milestone and the smiling graduate. Investors have to put money behind their assessment. Somewhere in that difference lies the purpose of this cheerful publishing exercise: give readers a company they can feel good about. Whether the falling shares influenced its timing remains a question, but they make a splendidly awkward backdrop to the congratulatory wank.

REDEFINE : Put The Settlement In The Welcome Pack

REDEFINE 2026 invites students from 11 Indian business schools to explore industrial growth opportunities. Winning and runner-up teams receive cash prizes and offers of pre-placement interviews. Cummins presents the competition as an exercise in critical thinking and practical leadership.

Give them the emissions settlement and see how practical things get. Ask how they would reconcile the company’s environmental publicity with that regulatory record. Have them explain what accepting responsibility should involve, beyond finding enough cash to meet an agreed bill.

An ambitious student might even ask why the sponsor’s definition of accountability deserves to pass unexamined. That would make a more useful afternoon than another presentation about expanding customer segments. There are already plenty of clever sods capable of finding new markets. People willing to interrogate the company paying for the competition might be rather more interesting.

The Mining Anniversary Has A Chemistry Problem

“Powering the depths” celebrates a century of Cummins in mining. It offers a “glorious past”, cleaner technologies and a vision of carbon neutrality across its products by 2050. Cummins supplies the history, the verdict on that history and the promise of what follows. Convenient arrangement.

Then comes the sentence claiming “significantly reduced nitrous oxide, particulate matter, and CO2 emissions.” Nitrous oxide is N₂O. The nitrogen oxides addressed by Stage V include nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide. If the writer means NOx, somebody has cocked up the chemistry. If Cummins really means N₂O, it should supply the measurements supporting that particular claim.

The carbon claim needs its own explanation. Stage V compliance does not itself establish a CO₂ reduction. Cummins’ earlier technical article handles this more clearly: it explains the rules’ focus on NOx and particulate matter, then separately claims an average 5% fuel-consumption improvement over previous engine generations.

That distinction matters. A named pollutant, a comparator and a measured improvement give the reader something useful. Bundling them into a broad declaration of cleaner operation leaves the important work unfinished. Cummins sells machinery that depends on precise specifications. Its environmental publicity ought to manage a basic distinction between gases without needing an irritated blogger to get the spanners out.

A Bridge With Plenty Of Time For Servicing

“Balancing the Equation for Sustainable Mining” discusses the infrastructure, cost and safety problems involved in changing how mines operate. Cummins promotes microgrids, hybrids and dual-fuel systems, including retrofits that extend existing equipment’s working life.

There are sound reasons to improve machinery already in service. There are also sound commercial reasons for its supplier to favour a lengthy relationship involving rebuilds, parts and maintenance. Both interests deserve a place in the explanation.

Ask for the bloody timetable. How much fuel does the proposed change save? What happens to total emissions? When does the intermediate arrangement give way to whatever is supposed to follow it?

A bridge should take you somewhere. Without measurable milestones, it can become a marvellous place to remain a paying customer. Cummins’ commercial interest in keeping equipment useful is perfectly intelligible. The environmental destination needs more than a reassuring name and an assumption that everything eventually works out.

Otherwise, “transition” becomes a wonderfully elastic word. Stretch it far enough and an extended service relationship starts looking like a climate achievement before anyone has finished the calculation.

Luxury Cruising Has Entered The Lesson

“Kings of the Adriatic” celebrates Cummins’ Croatian dealer and its work on Emerald cruise yachts. The article describes the larger Emerald Kaia accommodating 128 passengers and exceeding its projected speed. Its dealer sounds delighted with the engines.

The operator supplies the rest of the scene: expanded dining, spacious accommodation and a Wellness Deck. Down below, combustion does the work. Up above, the customer has somewhere pleasant to recover from the exhausting business of being on holiday. Cummins’ growth portfolio evidently has room for both essential transport and moving a particularly well-appointed lunch between coastal destinations.

The piece highlights IMO Tier III compliance in the yacht projects. That standard addresses nitrogen oxides. Assessing the wider carbon impact would require fuel consumption, occupancy and operating conditions. The regulatory badge cannot do all that arithmetic while everyone else goes upstairs for a drink.

Then the copy appears to lose track of the vessels. After introducing the superyachts, it sends them onto rivers including the Rhine and Danube. Emerald describes them as its sea-going yacht fleet. The paragraph seems to have mixed the operator’s river business with its yachts. Before charting the future of power, perhaps locate the fucking boats.

The X10 Gets On With Selling Engines

The X10 article makes a clear commercial proposition. Cummins promotes a common engine platform across delivery vehicles, vocational trucks, emergency vehicles, recreational vehicles, regional haulage and buses. Familiar equipment can simplify maintenance, training and planning. Connected support promises to help customers anticipate problems and reduce downtime.

That is a recognisable business strategy: become a convenient choice across more applications, then support the equipment throughout its life. Customers gain consistency. Cummins gains opportunities to remain involved in their operations.

The environmental assessment requires another calculation. Fuel efficiency per engine tells us only part of the story. Total emissions also depend on the number of engines, their workload, fuel and service life. More activity can outweigh an improvement per vehicle.

A fleet can become easier to maintain while its overall footprint grows. Conversely, improvements can reduce that footprint. Show which is happening. “Efficient” is useful information when attached to a comparison; left floating on its own, it can end up doing a suspicious amount of work for the marketing department.

Accountability Looks Comfortable On LinkedIn

Cummins’ March ethics-award announcement repeatedly invokes accountability. Its current diversity page includes a commitment to strengthening it. An August mining interview features Gbile Adewunmi talking about “owning up to our messes”. Bonnie Fetch has published a LinkedIn article examining accountability alongside psychological safety.

Fetch’s article offers a useful test. She distinguishes considered risks from those that ignore constraints or conceal information. A single failure differs from a pattern requiring stronger consequences. Apply that standard throughout the organisation and it becomes more demanding than the usual management sermon.

I have wondered whether the company would prefer searches for “Cummins accountability” to encounter its own reassuring language before reaching its critic. Repetition cannot establish that intention. It does, however, give TCAP more statements against which to assess the business. If the intention is to reclaim the phrase, the bastards have chosen a word with obligations attached.

TCAP already examined the August interview on 6 August, placing its claims about accepting responsibility beside the company’s response to the emissions settlement. That comparison was public before these five new stories appeared. The latest publicity enters an existing discussion. Cummins can contribute to it, but it cannot determine that everybody must begin again with the company’s preferred introduction.

Nor does a pleasant LinkedIn discussion exhaust the subject. Accountability gets difficult when the person asking the question has stopped being impressed by your job title. Anyone can endorse the principle among colleagues. Try practising it when the questioner is unwelcome, persistent and prepared to publish the answer.

The $1.675 Billion Practical Exercise

In January 2024, US authorities announced the settlement requiring Cummins to pay a $1.675 billion civil penalty, described at the time as the largest in a Clean Air Act case. The EPA identifies 630,000 model-year 2013–2019 Ram vehicles equipped with software defeat devices. Its account explains that the software reduced the effectiveness of emissions controls during normal driving.

The settlement also required recalls, pollution mitigation and changes to internal processes. These were specific pickup-truck engines and specific regulatory proceedings. They provide substantial material for any assessment of Cummins’ claims about emissions expertise and corporate responsibility.

Now read the company’s December 2023 announcement: “The company has seen no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith and does not admit wrongdoing.” Place that sentence beside the later celebration of owning its mistakes. Leave both on the screen long enough for the audience to read them.

There is the case study. What does accepting responsibility require? Which failures does the company acknowledge? How should outsiders assess the changes? A serious answer would explain how the organisation understands the conduct described by the regulators and how it prevents a repeat.

The settlement supplied consequences. The company’s response expressly withheld an admission of wrongdoing. Its later publicity presents willingness to accept responsibility as a distinguishing virtue. That combination deserves examination, however inconvenient it becomes for the next presentation about values.

The REDEFINE students could spend a productive afternoon on it. Give them the actual wording and require a clear answer. Deduct marks whenever somebody uses “journey” to avoid a question. Anyone who can reconcile the documents without disappearing into management bollocks has probably earned the interview.

They Left It Too Late To Keep This Small

The easy version of this dispute has gone. TCAP has grown beyond one complaint and one article. Readers can return to earlier material, follow the documents and compare a fresh statement with something the company said months before. The archive gives new publicity a context Cummins does not control.

That is the substance behind the argument that repeating “accountability” will not bury TCAP. A company can publish an agreeable account of itself beside an uncomfortable one. More agreeable copy does not alter the documents supporting the criticism. It may compete for attention, but it leaves the underlying questions intact.

They allowed the project time to develop. What might once have looked like a short burst of anger became a continuing publication with named subjects, linked records and a history of following up. If the hope now is that enough wholesome uses of the word will make the troublesome version fade, that is a remarkably thin response to something they have let become this substantial.

These five stories demonstrate how easily the work continues. The mining articles raise questions about emissions, measurement and transition plans. The yachts show another part of the growth portfolio. The X10 explains the appeal of becoming a common platform across more markets. REDEFINE provides a setting in which to examine the whole arrangement.

Cummins wants students to identify business opportunities. Here is one problem worth handing them: what should a company do when its publicity has become source material for a critic with a growing archive?

They might recommend better answers. They might suggest correcting the chemistry, explaining the emissions figures and giving the promises some measurable deadlines. Someone particularly promising could point out that publishing the word more often does fuck-all to resolve the conduct being questioned.

That would be an education worth sponsoring.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Cummins Confidential : Repeating “Accountability” Won’t Bury TCAP