Summary

A fire accident involving a truck transporting Motorola network equipment led to an unexpected marketing campaign showcasing the durability and reliability of Motorola products.

Abstract

In the early 1990s, a Motorola truck carrying network hardware for a significant Indian Railways contract caught fire due to a welding mishap, resulting in the equipment being submerged in a lake in an attempt to extinguish the flames. Despite the calamity, many of the devices, including those that were half-burnt or waterlogged, continued to function, demonstrating Motorola's exceptional engineering and product robustness. This real-world testament to the quality of Motorola's products was later leveraged in a marketing campaign that emphasized the reliability of their equipment under extreme conditions.

Opinions

The author expresses admiration for Motorola's engineering excellence, highlighting the unexpected performance of the equipment after the accident.
The incident is portrayed as a testament to Motorola's high standards in material engineering, design, and packaging.
The author reflects on the event as a memorable and classic Motorola incident, indicating a sense of pride in being associated with the company.
The marketing team's decision to use the incident in advertorials is seen as a strategic move to capitalize on a genuine, albeit unfortunate, demonstration of product resilience.
The author implies that the client's willingness to endorse Motorola after the incident, despite the initial loss, speaks volumes about the trust in Motorola's products and services.

How a Fire Accident Triggered a Marketing Campaign

Network equipment lay half burnt and floating on a lake

My son recently got a Smart TV. When the large carton (55” package) was placed in the living room, and I saw the Motorola logo on the box, it hit me. When was the last time I had seen a large Motorola carton? Twenty plus years ago.

Motorola was my first employer, decades ago. Working then with Motorola telecom and data networks, I was familiar with Motorola gear in large boxes.

That brought a flood of memories. And here is one classic Motorola incident you will find interesting. At least, it is, for me.

This happened way back:

This happened in the early ’90s in Motorola India where I was part of the Networking Projects division. We had just won a large data networking contract from Indian Railways. I was a young engineer then, a greenhorn.

Indian Railways was one of the largest train operators in the world (still is) and had placed a contract with Motorola to provide data networking solutions for the pan-India ticketing and freight automation system. We were to provide all network equipment and related management software solution to the client.

The initial shipment of network hardware (statistical multiplexers, packet data switches, modems) was ready and loaded on the truck to deliver to the client’s central warehouse some 1000 miles away. The truck left on its journey and was to arrive at the destination on the fifth day.

Except that the truck never reached the destination. As part of the installation team, I was to fly to the client location but while following up realized the goods had not reached. The trucking agency was clueless, and the truck driver was missing.

The situation was getting mysterious and my manager asked me to go to the transport agency and find out what exactly had happened and where our products were sitting.

Where was my stuff?

Somewhere mid-way through the journey, the truck driver realized the door of the truck had a loose latch apparently rattling quite badly along the way. Worried, the latch might come off, he engaged with a local metal workshop on the highway, to have it fixed. The worker used a high flame welding arc and the truck caught fire.

Panicking and not sure what to do, the truck driver decided to drive to a nearby lake to douse the fire. By then the truck was a raging inferno on wheels. At the lake, not knowing how to douse the fire, the driver, apparently reversed the truck into the water and lost control in the process. The burning debris partially drowned in the water, and some of it lay scattered on the lake banks. The truck driver fled the scene and was absconding.

When I got to the lake site, after 3 days, with the insurance agency, and trucking company folks, some Motorola cartons were still floating stacked up one above the other. Some boxes were burnt beyond recognition and some had drowned. Some of the neighborhood kids were playing with our packaging and cartons.

We did what we had to as a responsible company and shipped fresh stocks to the client site. The insurance and legal teams required us to ship every piece of wreckage, back to the factory, and conduct a battery of tests for analysis and reports. All of that was done and completed.

Throw us to the Fire and then some

Some amazing results emerged from the tests. Many of the network equipment that was half burnt, when powered on, started working. Some of the cartons (with hardware inside) that were soaked in wet mud for few days (at crash site), after initial cleaning up, powered on, lights up and started beeping the familiar ‘carrier detect and green led 1 on’.

Detailed tests proved remarkable engineering performance even under severely stressed conditions. These were real-world (or worse than real-world) scenarios. Almost comparable to a network center switching room catching fire and the equipment would continue to deliver even if the fire had burnt much of the facility to ashes.

The testing team was dumbfounded. For us, greenhorns, it was the ultimate testimonial to Motorola’s world-class material engineering, design, ruggedness, packaging, humidity sealing, and robustness. Motorola, those days, a mecca for telecom engineers, went up a whole notch in the ‘most desired places to work’ rating scales!

And here is where it gets interesting. Shortly after the Railways project successfully went live the marketing team was found working on a series of print advertorials showing these various scenarios and why ‘you never go wrong with Motorola’.

Imagine a top client endorsing such a commercial/product advertisement with his own words. And that too after having lost his original shipment to a bizarre ‘fire and water accident’, and still managing to launch his ‘ticketing and cargo booking automation project’ on schedule.

Fast-forwarding to the present, the large Motorola carton still sits in the living room, innocently. The Motorola install crew just opened the beautiful new product from its covers and completed installation.

And now to happy viewing.