Chapter 316: Speed of Support

The first warning sign came from a provincial railway depot. The second came from a textile plant in the east. The third arrived by courier in the form of a blistering, ink-splattered letter from a merchant who had spent sixty-two thousand riels on a Cargo One, only to discover that the nearest qualified mechanic lived forty miles away.

By the time the fourth complaint reached Ernest Teucher’s desk, Arthur Pendelton was already at Plant One demanding an emergency executive meeting—preferably well before breakfast.

Ernest, however, had other ideas.

"Nine o’clock," Ernest said mildly, not looking up from his tea.

Arthur glared at him across the desk. "Eight."

"Nine."

"Ernest, we have a crisis brewing."

"Then it will keep until nine."

Over by the window, Hollen Vane took a slow sip of his black coffee. "He’s got you there, Arthur."

Arthur spun on his heel. "You’re supposed to back me up!"

"I back reasonable working hours," Hollen said smoothly.

"You were down at the foundry floor at six this morning!"

"That’s different."

"How is that different?"

Hollen set his mug down. "Because I actually wanted to be there."

Ernest chuckled. Arthur closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had worked with both men long enough to know when he had lost an argument.

"Fine. Nine sharp," Arthur said, gathering the stack of angry letters into his folder. "But I expect both of you to take this seriously."

"We will," Ernest promised, his smile fading.

Beneath Arthur’s usual dramatics lay a hard, uncomfortable truth: the Teucher Motor Company was growing far faster than its supporting backbone. And that gap was turning into a trap.

At nine o’clock, the main boardroom was packed. Arthur took the head of the table, Hollen leaned against the frame of a floor-to-ceiling production chart, and Ernest sat in his usual spot with his leather-bound notebook open. Surrounding them were the division heads: commercial vehicles, passenger service, the engine works, and the nascent network of authorized regional dealerships.

Arthur didn’t bother with pleasantries. "Gentlemen, we have a success problem."

A younger manager down the table cracked a small smile. Arthur pinned him with an icy stare. "Don’t smile. It isn’t a compliment."

The manager’s smile vanished instantly.

"Orders for the Cargo One are climbing daily," Arthur continued, thumbing through his papers. "The Royal Postal Service has officially accepted its initial trial fleet. Carrow Motor Transport is expanding aggressively, and half a dozen major breweries and mills have placed deposits. Meanwhile, Plant Two’s streamlined assembly line has driven the Model One’s retail price down to sixty-one thousand five hundred riels, creating a surge in private buyers."

Ernest gave a quiet nod. That part was great news.

"Unfortunately," Arthur said, his voice dropping, "our support network is barely inching along."

He dropped four open letters onto the center of the mahogany table.

"Exhibit A: a Cargo One hauling timber near a provincial junction blew a radiator hose. A ten-minute fix. The driver cut the ignition in time to save the block, but the nearest authorized garage didn’t have the proper diameter hose in stock. The truck sat on a dirt verge for two full days while the driver lost freight fees."

Arthur tapped the next page. "Exhibit B: a private Model One owner waited three weeks for a replacement transmission gear. Exhibit C: an independent village blacksmith attempted to adjust the mechanical brakes on a three-ton commercial lorry without the slightest clue how the linkages worked. He rigged them backwards; the driver only realized it when he tried to stop on an empty flat instead of an incline."

He picked up the fourth letter and read the merchant’s closing line: "I bought this vehicle because your salesmen swore Teucher machinery had national backing. The truck itself is brilliant, but keeping it running is ten times harder than buying it."

Arthur dropped the paper. A heavy silence settled over the room.

Hollen crossed his thick arms. "Can’t argue with that. The man’s right."

"He is," Ernest agreed.

Arthur blinked, caught off guard. "No defense?"

"None at all," Ernest said, leaning back. "We’ve spent months obsessing over factory output, sales numbers, and assembly tolerances. But we haven’t paid attention to what happens after the machine leaves our gates."

He stood up, walked over to the slate board at the end of the room, and wrote two phrases in bold white chalk:

VEHICLE IN SERVICE

VEHICLE OUT OF SERVICE

"A fleet manager doesn’t care how brilliant our engines are if his truck spends three days a month parked in a repair shed," Ernest told the room. "From today on, we measure availability."

He drew an equation below the words:

AVAILABILITY = HOURS READY FOR WORK ÷ TOTAL SCHEDULED HOURS

"For commercial operators, this number decides whether they buy a second truck or go back to horses," Ernest said. He turned to the head of service. "I want weekly logs from every authorized shop. Repair turnaround times, part shortages, recurring component failures, and idle vehicles."

The service manager looked slightly overwhelmed. "My Lord... that’s an enormous amount of clerical overhead for small repair shops."

"Then design the forms so they take two minutes to fill out," Ernest replied calmly. "Checkboxes and codes. If a system is too complicated to report, nobody will use it."

Arthur leaned forward, tapping his pen. "Before we rush into building brick-and-mortar service centers in every market town in the kingdom, I’d like to remind everyone of our capital reserves."

"We aren’t building full depots everywhere," Ernest said. "At least not yet."

Arthur let out a breath, though Hollen gave him an amused, knowing smirk that suggested the relief wouldn’t last long.

"We need a tiered system," Ernest explained, sketching three concentric circles on the slate. "Tier one: three major regional workshops equipped for heavy overhauls, casting repairs, and engine rebuilds. Tier two: licensed town garages handling routine adjustments, tire swaps, and fluid changes. Tier three: certified local stockists who carry consumable parts and nothing else."

"Where do the parts come from?" Arthur asked. "The shipping alone could bankrupt the regional margins."

"We won’t haul them on roads," Ernest said. "We’ll use the Belfast National Railway. Every major town has a freight siding. We place our regional parts depots right alongside the central freight terminals. When an authorized garage an hour down the line needs a clutch lining, it goes out on the morning passenger express."

Hollen nodded. "And the garages hold standard consumables on their own shelves so they aren’t waiting on trains for a split hose."

"Precisely," Ernest said. "Which brings us to our biggest blind spot: we have to tell them what to stock."

The true scale of the problem became obvious an hour later, when Hollen hauled a crate of assorted metal hardware into the boardroom and dumped it onto the table.

Clutch springs, roller bearings, mounting studs, and water pump fittings rattled across the polished wood.

Hollen pointed to two heavy steel bolts that looked nearly identical. "Ernest, which one is the leaf-spring shackle bolt for the Cargo One?"

Ernest picked them up, weighed them in his hands, checked the thread pitch, and pointed to the left one. "This one. The shoulder is three millimeters longer."

"Right," Hollen said. He turned straight to Arthur. "Now picture a tired mechanic in a dim garage sixty miles away in a rainstorm. He has no blueprints, no calipers, and three impatient customers yelling at him. What happens when he forces the wrong bolt in?"

"The suspension shears on a hill," Arthur said quietly.

"Exactly," Hollen said. He held up two bearings that looked identical to the naked eye. "These have different heat treatments and load tolerances. Mix them up, and an axle seizes at thirty miles an hour."

Ernest pulled his notebook closer. "We need a master parts catalogue. Not just a list—an illustrated technical manual."

"With part numbers stamped directly into every casting," Hollen added. "Exploded diagrams, torque values, wear limits, and replacement intervals."

Arthur pinched his forehead again. "Do you have any idea how much technical drafting and printing that requires? That’s easily two hundred pages of plates."

"Then make it three hundred," Ernest said without hesitation. "I’d rather pay a printer than pay out wrongful death settlements because a village mechanic had to guess how to set a brake shoe."

Within a fortnight, the changes began taking shape. But as Ernest soon learned, handing out books and parts lists was only the first half of the battle. The real test lay inside the shops themselves.