Friday, October 03, 2003

How sad, but I guess I should have expected this to happen one day.

Our bulldozer, which I purchased a couple years back to prevent someone else to purchase and take out of the region, has been sitting in the yard at my factory, as has my excavator and dump truck, so when someone needs them, they would be available.

We got a request to rent the bulldozer to till 30 hectors for a new plantation and while our bulldozer driver Sako was checking out everything to make sure things were in order so he could ship off the bulldozer, he discovered that the transmission oil was low and added 10 liters of oil. The 10 liters didn't make a difference, so he ended up adding 20 more liters before the dip-stick registered anything. The transmission take 44 liters. On top of this, he discovered that someone had filled water from a hatch that could be mistaken for a hatch that goes to the transmission. From what we figure, someone drained the oil and then figured they would replace the oil with water so no one would notice. Worse thing is if and thank goodness it didn't happen that the transmission was run with water and burned up, as it would have cost me a good deal of money, that is if I could even find a replacement.

I immediately had my worker check the oil level in the excavator since it's hydraulic system has 120 liters of oil in it and sure as can be, 70 or 80 liters had been removed.

I'm guessing that all this happened about a month ago, as my jeep was at the factory for quite a while and when I last used it a month ago, I had left it there with about 20 liters of gas in it and when I went back to use it a week ago, there was no gas in it and my guard said that it must have evaporated. Now I really need to think what has happened and who needs to answer for the loss.

A friend of mine said that this kind of stuff use to happen in America back in the 70's during the fuel shortage, but I would guess it use to happen then not because of poverty, but because of a shortage. Today here in Armenia and Artsakh, I think this kind of theft goes on due to poverty and most probably a desperation for the need to put food on the table, thus for me I'm not so mad at the person who stole the oil and fuel, but am more upset about the system that causes people to lower themselves to the level of thief. Who do you suppose should answer for that?

My loss is about $100 to replace the oil in both bulldozer and excavator. I need to have the dump truck checked to see if it has any oil in it's system. Ufff!!

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