Penny Wise, Pound (Shop) Foolish: When a Truckmaker’s Stinginess Shut Down the Assembly Line
What happens when a giant company tries to save pennies—only to burn through a fortune? Reddit’s r/MaliciousCompliance recently delivered a deliciously old-school tale of business stubbornness, featuring a specialty truck manufacturer, a scrappy fabrication shop, and a lesson in “Just In Time” inventory that cost way more than anyone bargained for.
The original poster (OP), u/ScientistOtherwise34, recounts a saga from the 1970s (yes, disco, bell-bottoms, and all) when they wore multiple hats at a small fabrication shop. One of their biggest clients—a major truck product manufacturer—kept changing part specs and then refused to pay a few extra cents per part, despite ironclad contracts. What followed was a shutdown that cost the client hundreds of thousands of dollars over a measly $250 dispute.
Ready for a masterclass in penny-pinching gone nuclear? Let’s dive in.
The Setup: When Pennies Matter More Than Production
Our story opens in the smoky haze of a 1970s machine shop, where OP juggled billing, accounts receivable, and apparently, patience. The client—a specialty truckmaker—relied on them for crucial custom parts. But here’s the catch: every time the client wanted a change (which was often), the shop had to make new dies and adjust production. The contract wisely said that any change in costs (even just a few cents per part) had to be paid.
Simple, right? Not so fast.
No matter how small the increase—say, from $0.35 to $0.38 per part—the client balked. They’d reject invoices, citing the original contract price. OP explained. They refused. Rinse, repeat. The difference added up to just $250, but the principle was apparently worth going to war over.
As u/sydmanly put it, “Penny wise, pound foolish.” Or, in the words of u/yarukinai, “Penny-wise, 10-pound-foolish,” since the ratio between the loss and the savings was, in their words, “in the order of 1000.”
The Showdown: Just In Time Becomes Just Too Late
Eventually, OP played the only card left: they stopped making the parts. And since the truckmaker used a “Just In Time” (JIT) inventory system—which means no stockpile of parts, ever—the assembly lines ground to a halt. Panic ensued.
The client called, frantic. Where were the parts? Why was production stopped? OP’s answer: “You refuse to pay, so we refuse to ship.” Suddenly, those three cents didn’t look so insignificant after all.
It took a few days of this corporate standoff before the client caved, approved all the change orders, and cut the check. By then, their downtime had cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. The lesson? Sometimes, the cost of stubbornness dwarfs the cost of compliance.
Reddit, of course, had a field day. u/Liveitup1999 chimed in with a real-world example: “If you failed to deliver the parts on time and shut the plant down because of lack of parts, the company got fined $1 million a day.” OP [u/ScientistOtherwise34] responded, “But I bet they paid on time and fully.” Apparently, not everyone needs to learn the hard way.
Dies, Dollars, and Denial: The Aftermath
But the drama didn’t end when the check cleared. When the client’s contract expired, they jumped ship to another machine shop—and promptly demanded the dies and tools the old shop had painstakingly crafted. Dies, as u/Agitated_Basket7778 hilariously noted, are “Expensive. Like money, they don't grow on trees.” (And, in the words of u/hierofant, “Unlike spaghetti, dies don't grow on trees”—a mental image I can’t unsee.)
The client balked at paying for the dies, so the shop refused to ship them out. More downtime. More lost revenue. As u/knoby180 explained, “Legally speaking, we own all the rights to said molds. If the customer wants them they have to pay through the nose... We still have the molds for several parts that the customer ended the contract early and tried [to] take the parts to another supplier.”
You’d think this would be a one-time “oops,” but OP notes the client started pulling the same tricks with the new shop. Some companies never learn.
The Community Reacts: Wit, Warnings, and War Stories
Redditors, as usual, brought the heat—and the humor. The top comment, “Penny wise, pound foolish,” became a running gag, with riffs like “Penny Wise, Pounded in the Butt Foolish” (thank you, u/agm66, for the mental image we didn’t know we needed). Others swapped tales of industry pain, like u/studyinformore recalling how expensive and complex die-making truly is, especially for big-name clients like Harley or Snap-On.
Some questioned whether this was “malicious compliance” or just “running a business.” As u/rwilcox argued, “This is called ‘running a business.’” Others, like u/throwaway_0x90, saw it as a textbook (if businesslike) form of malicious compliance: “Not shipping the parts because they refused to pay is a ‘malicious compliance’ of a business-contract. Customer didn't pay, seller didn't provide products and seller knows lack of timely delivery will hurt this customer greatly.”
Industry veterans dropped cautionary tales about big clients who squeeze suppliers mercilessly, only to lose them (and their supply chains) when the penny-pinching goes too far. As u/2lovesFL warned, corporations often push smaller suppliers to the brink, making themselves the majority of their business—then squeeze prices until both sides lose.
And, in a comment that sums up the spirit of the whole saga, u/Ambitious-Ganache891 noted: “Sometimes the headache of dealing with a difficult client far outweighs the financial gain... If it is an ongoing and habitual problem to get paid for the work you have already done then often it is much simpler to stop working with that client and devote your time and efforts to other clients that appreciate your business and actually pay their bills without haggling about it.”
Conclusion: The True Cost of Corporate Stubbornness
So what’s the real lesson here? In the race to save pennies, don’t torch your own dollars—and don’t forget that suppliers are partners, not adversaries. In an era when a missing part can shut down an entire production line, the cost of stubbornness can be astronomical.
If you’ve got a story of workplace stubbornness, JIT disasters, or business blunders, drop it in the comments below! And if you work with machine shops—maybe pay for those change orders next time.
What’s the most “penny wise, pound foolish” thing you’ve ever seen at work? Share your tales and let’s keep the discussion rolling!
Original Reddit Post: You need the parts but don't want to pay. Right