Cummins has found a new way to dress control up as collaboration. The “Power to Build Community” sounds like a grassroots forum for small truck builders, a digital round table for the people who keep fleets running. But once you click through the gloss, it’s not a community. It’s a corporate choke chain wrapped in polite engineering language and mandatory logins.
The Invitation That Isn’t One
The pitch is simple: join our new platform, talk to our experts, access our software. All you have to do is create a Cummins login, register for the OEM Access Portal, and step neatly into their walled garden. Once you’re in, the rules are clear. Integration happens on their terms. Every connection, every control signal, every diagnostic query routes back to Cummins.
They even tried to sneak it past the radar, sliding the “Power to Build” story behind an earlier news release, as if the shuffle might fool TCAP into not noticing. Well we did, and laughed.
They call it “empowering self-sufficiency”. What it really means is you’re not fixing anything without their permission.
The Hidden Handshake
The so-called community doubles as a live training pen for their delayed diesel rollouts, the B7.2 and X10 engines due in 2027. They need upfitters testing, feeding data, and ironing out the kinks long before the market notices the lag.
Fire trucks, tow rigs, cement mixers, all neatly listed as “supported applications”. It reads like a call sheet for unpaid beta testers. Cummins gets real-world feedback, free labour, and tighter control over how its engines are installed and serviced. Everyone else gets a login screen and a “knowledge base”.
The Dependency Web
Buried in the fine print is the real deal. To integrate Cummins engines, builders must use their digital tools, interface licences, and ECM configurations. Even the wiring diagrams point straight back to Cummins. PTO controls, multiplex setups, torque requests, all hard-wired through their proprietary software and datalink standards.
It’s not collaboration. It’s digital gatekeeping disguised as technical support.
They’ve even built “Installation Quality Audits”, a nice way to say compliance checks. If your integration isn’t up to Cummins standards, they’ll know. And if you want to stay compliant, you’ll need more training, more access, more Cummins.
“Software’s Free. Hardware Costs Money.”
One of their engineers even said it. “Software’s free. Hardware costs money”. He’s right, but only half right. Software’s free until you’re locked into theirs. The minute every PTO, throttle, and diagnostic is running through Cummins firmware, free becomes a monthly bill for access and updates.
Predictive tech, over-the-air diagnostics, Acumen connectivity, all of it feeds back into Cummins Connected Solutions. That’s not community. That’s surveillance with a customer service smile.
The Bigger Picture
This isn’t about helping upfitters. It’s about conditioning them. The same company fined billions for emissions cheating is now marketing “collaboration portals” to make sure no one installs a bolt or wire without their oversight. A “community” where the only voice that matters belongs to Cummins.
So when they talk about “Power to Build”, they mean their power and your build. The rest is just login credentials.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
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