Crybaby of the Day

Jamie Makgill pulled into a new Mobil self-service truckstop in Mangawhai, Northland, planning to fill his 2018 Ford Ranger ute with diesel for a trip to Auckland. [...]

It wasn’t diesel that he was pumping that day, but a product called AdBlue, a diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) injected into the exhaust systems of late model trucks and some cars to reduce emissions.

It goes into a completely different tank and should never be mixed with diesel. [...]

At the Mangawhai Mobil, the AdBlue dispenser was on the same bowser as a diesel dispenser, with a blue handle rather than black, signifying diesel. [...]

Makgill pumped about 20l of AdBlue into his fuel tank, but was having trouble dispensing it.

Although the nozzle fit snugly into his fuel inlet, it kept clicking off.

He tried removing the magnetic cap on the nozzle – designed to ensure that people with DEF-compatible vehicles insert the nozzle into the correct tank – but that stopped the flow, so he put it back on.

Then he spilled some of the product on the forecourt.

He eventually gave up and switched to a diesel pump and finished filling up with that.

“I drove off, and within about 100m my vehicle was engulfed in smoke and just ruined.” [...]

Although his mechanic and an AA assessor had estimated that $30,000 was the cost of repairs, Mittal & Son provided an “equally compelling” statement from a loss adjuster that the claim was “highly inflated”. [...]

[Mathew Alderidice, the Motor Trade Association’s sector manager for energy and heavy vehicles said he was unsure how Makgill had managed to dispense AdBlue when it had a magnetic cap, but no system was 100 per cent failsafe.

“[The caps] are there to make people stop and think, ‘am I doing the right thing here?’.

“It’s like having a safety on a gun, it’s going to work 99 per cent of the time but sometimes it doesn’t.”