Murphy’s Law at Travel-Rite
Mike Jones had worked at Travel-Rite as a bus driver for five years. He enjoyed
the job. In turn, Travel-Rite was pleased with Mike, because he was courteous
with clients and had a flawless safety record.
Mike was driving twenty-five tourists from Washington, DC to New York City on
Interstate 95. He noticed that his fuel gauge showed that his twenty-nine
passenger mini-bus was getting low on fuel, so he pulled into a gas station along
the highway. At the fuel pump, he told the station attendant to fill up the fuel tank.
Ten minutes later, the tank was filled and Mike pulled out of the gas station. The
bus traveled about twenty-five meters, and then the engine died. Mike tried
futilely to restart the engine.
It turned out that the gas station attendant had accidentally filled the fuel tank
with gasoline instead of diesel fuel. The only way to deal with this would be to
drain the gasoline out of the fuel tank and to remove all traces of gasoline in the
engine. The gas station lacked this capability, so the gas station manager
arranged to have the mini-bus towed to a nearby garage. Meanwhile, Mike
telephoned Travel-Rite’s headquarters to tell them of his predicament. The
headquarters staff arranged to have the tourists picked up by a bus service
operating out of New York City. Two hours after the bus breakdown, the tourists
resumed their journey.
The mini-bus was towed to the garage, where mechanics attempted to determine
whether the engine had been damaged by the gasoline. The chief mechanic
telephoned Travel-Rite headquarters to deliver his report and was put in touch
with Jennifer Chen, Travel-Rite’s president.
“There’s no problem cleaning up the engine,” he reported. “In fact, we’ve already
got it working. However, you appear to have a problem with your transmission,
because the bus won’t go into second gear. We looked at the transmission and
saw that it’s damaged.” 2015 University of Management and Technology 1 MGT253. Risk and Quality Management Jennifer was shocked to hear this and immediately telephoned the automobile
dealer from whom she bought her buses. When he heard the story, he
understood the nature of the problem.
“The transmission was damaged when the bus was being towed,” he said. “The
drive trains of buses are a bit complicated. You can’t just hook them up to a tow
truck and start towing them. Several steps have to be taken to prepare them for
towing, and obviously the tow truck driver didn’t do this.”
Jennifer felt sick. What began as an innocent refueling had turned into a
disaster. Clients had been inconvenienced. Her new bus had been damaged.
All this was happening far from headquarters, so resolution of the dispute with
the gas station, tow truck company, and garage would have to be carried out
remotely.
Questions
1. From Travel-Rite’s perspective, to what extent is the incident described in this
case an “act of God” as opposed to a controllable event?
2. What general categories of risk are being encountered here (e.g., business
risk)? Explain your answer.
3. How would you go about conducting an ex post facto risk assessment of this
incident? What conclusions might result from this assessment? What risk
mitigation steps should be taken to avoid a repetition of this kind of event in
the future?
