We signal that we have been through Cummins’ Case Studies maze, pulled out more than 200 customer names, and started putting them where they belong: under light, under pressure, and under Customer Corner. Then, funny enough, the newsroom starts acting like a time machine. Old diesel comfort pieces begin surfacing in fresh clothes, as if the job now is not to answer the customer list but to clutter the lane and throw us off it. We see the game. And they can fuck off.
We Told Them We Were In The Walls
This did not happen randomly.
On 19 April, we said plainly that Cummins.com was not a website so much as a labyrinth. A maze. A cellar. A hidden showroom where the dirtier commercial bragging sits one level beneath the ethics fog and people-story incense. We did not hint at it. We signalled it.
We told them we had gone into the Case Studies section and started pulling names. We told them the buried customer list was the real story. We told them the front room said transition and purpose while the cellar said something harder, uglier and far more commercially honest.
Then we kept going.
Customer Corner started doing what it was built to do. Not waving vaguely at “stakeholders”, but naming them. Pulling them out. Reading the customer list as confession, not marketing collateral.
And once that started to bite, the weather shifted.
Suddenly The Newsroom Is A Time Machine
Now, all of a sudden, Cummins has a nice tidy explainer sitting there with a May 04, 2026 date on it, calmly educating the public about diesel and battery-electric powertrains.
How lovely.
Except it does not smell new. The older 8 February 2024 URL for the same article title now routes through to the newer-dated page. Same general article. Same soft diesel reassurance. Same balanced little “both have a role” sermon. Same broad effort to calm readers down and keep old combustion respectable while the future remains commercially awkward.
That is not some charming little publishing coincidence. That is exactly the sort of thing that starts looking grubby when a company is under pressure and suddenly needs more harmless-looking surface activity in the feed.
It is not evidence of genius. It is evidence of nerves.
This Is Not Education. It Is Decoy Behaviour
Cummins is not enlightening the masses here. It is rearranging the furniture.
That is the point.
When Customer Corner starts dragging buried customer boasts into the daylight, Cummins does not have much interest in answering the real issue, which is the filth of the commercial associations sitting in its own hidden showroom. So instead the newsroom starts coughing up old comfort copy in a newer time slot. Look over here. Nice explainer. Nice transition language. Nice truck-versus-battery compare-and-contrast for the casual browser. Nothing to see. Certainly no reason to keep crawling through the cellar pulling names off the wall.
That is the game. Not rebuttal. Not honesty. Not reckoning.
Decoy behaviour.
Pad the feed. Soften the mood. Change the subject. Throw a diesel-versus-electric explainer into the current cycle and hope the clutter does half the work.
Very Cummins.
Same Diesel Sermon, Fresh Label
And of course the article being hauled forward is not some brave new contribution. It is the same old Cummins comfort blanket.
Diesel still matters. Diesel still works. Diesel still has strengths. Battery-electric has its place as well. Everybody calm down. Everybody keep buying engines. Everybody pretend this is educational neutrality rather than product positioning with a clean shirt on.
Cummins tells readers diesel excels in long-distance travel, durability and versatility. It tells them battery-electric is better for urban stop-start work. It reminds them today’s clean diesel engines emit far less than old ones and nudges biodiesel compatibility like a little moral air freshener for anyone “not yet ready” to move on.
That is not fresh thinking. That is the same old sermon with a new timestamp pinned to its chest.
Even The Picture Looks Like Bullshit
Then there is the image. The one I’ve had a laugh at before. Recycled.
Not grime. Not freight. Not hard commercial reality. Not a trucker. A glossy woman in designer shades being passed off as trucking authenticity while Cummins sells the same old diesel comfort pitch underneath.
That is the whole trick in one frame.
Dirty industrial hardware below. Polished lifestyle theatre above.
The visual does not inform. It softens. It tells the reader this is modern, clean, aspirational, progressive, still respectable. It is brochure theatre laid over an old combustion argument.
Cummins has always liked that move. Keep the hardware filthy. Keep the framing smooth.
Funny Timing, That
This is the bit Cummins will want treated as coincidence.
We signal that we have extracted more than 200 customers from the Case Studies cellar. We start hitting those customer relationships in Customer Corner. We make clear that the buried customer list is a richer source of truth than the nice warm sermon upstairs.
Then the newsroom starts surfacing old comfort content under fresher chronology.
Funny that.
No signal there at all, apparently.
Just a company with a growing problem in its own hidden showroom, suddenly finding time to shuffle older diesel explainer copy back into the current light.
You do not need a confession note to smell the panic. Timing does enough work on its own.
We Will Stay In The Cellar
Fine. Let them play newsroom games.
We are not here for the upstairs sermon anyway. We are here for the buried customer boasts, the hidden showroom, the institutions Cummins is proud to power once the halo crowd has gone home. We are here for Customer Corner, and the other series, and every name pulled from that cellar wall until the pattern is too obvious to pretend away.
If Cummins wants to turn the newsroom into a time machine every time the pressure lands, noted.
We will stick to Customer Corner and the other series until it fixes itself.
And they can fuck off.
Lee Thompson – Founder, Customer Corner, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Diesel powertrains vs battery electric powertrains explained – https://www.cummins.com/en-eu/news/2026/05/04/diesel-and-battery-electric-powertrains-whats-difference
- Diesel and battery electric powertrains: What’s the difference? – https://www.cummins.com/en-na/news/2024/02/08/diesel-and-battery-electric-powertrains-whats-difference