So I was thinking today (yeah, I know big shocker ).... I was laboring away at the new house and my mind was all over the place.

When I first got my truck one of my friend's father asked me, "Does that have the Cummings diesel in it?". I said, "Yeah it has a Cummins in it.". Thinking to myself, what a moron it clearly has no "G" and is plastered on the side of the truck. Coming from a private school things like proper spelling and punctuation were drilled into me. At the time I didn't know it was a regular thing to hear.

So anyway, where in the heck did the misconception that we have a Cummings in our trucks come from?

 

Same place that K-marts comes from - Hillbilly speak

 

Quite a large number of folks went to school with someone named Cummings, or worked with, or bowled with, or etc.

B4 the popularity spawned by Dodge, very few folks had ever heard of Cummins - 18-wheel'em drivers, industrial equip drivers, school, truck and industrial mechanics, etc.

Even at that, Cummins wasn't plastered all over everywhere, as it it now - a mechanic might notice the name on the CPL tag, then again, maybe not.

I know retired bus and truck mechanics that call 'em Cummings.

On the other hand, I sometimes call my ole pal of thirty years at work Al Cummins.

What can ya say...........................

 

If you type Cummins and use spell-check, it will try to substitute CUMMINGS

 

My wife's maiden name is Cummings. In my opinion, like was mentioned earlier, Cummings is the most common spelling of the two so thats why most of the uneducated diesel folk spell it as so.

 

It's really funny you should start this thread as I was just thinking about this today also. There is a street in Omaha called "Cummings". I heard there was a famous, rich family that lived in this area.

 

Cummings is just way more common of a name; Cummins is relatively alien.


Another thing though is a lot of truckers and people who should know better say Cummings. I've known some real old time gear rowers that say Cummings.

 

And some people are generally sloppy and not very observant.

 

if you do a google search you will see that ford does own cummings or i should say there is a cummings ford in troy pa.

 

morons...or ford owners...I think thats an oxymoron(sp?)

 

just show them a fender badge (that is what I do)

 

I think it comes from people hearing it as a last name, or likely the city in Georgia, Cumming. Funny coincidence, but Geno's Garage/TDR is based in Cumming. Of course general lack of attention to detail and hearing one hilljack pronounce it incorrectly will help spread the misnomer as well

 

I think that nowadays most people are just lazy about proper spelling and punctuation, and this probably leads into laziness about proper pronunciation. It also seems like most people will get irritated if you try to correct them (no matter how nicely you do it) and continue to misspell or misprononunce on purpose. Just a sign of the times I guess.

Tad

 

My best customer, who has over 50 Dodge/Cummins in his fleet, as well as about 20 road tractors and dumptrucks with Cummins engine's, calls them Cumming's. Don't know why, you'd think he'd know? I am not about to correct him though as he is my best customer.

 

Well, call me dumb, I thought you were asking where the name came from. Now that I re-read it, that isn't what you were asking. Anyway, I went to the trouble to look for it and I'm going to post it anyway for my trouble!

From http://www.cummins.com/na/pages/en/w...inshistory.cfm