Before they ended the call, Doug said something in a voice that sounded unlike the man Calvin remembered from Wichita. "I owe you an apology about 2012." Calvin answered, "You owe the next decision better research. That will do more good than an apology to me."
Doug insisted that the public remark had been unfair. "Then remember what it felt like to be sure of something you hadn't checked," Calvin said. "I've had to learn that lesson too. Let's put it to work."
Doug began calling neighboring cooperatives that afternoon. Some managers were immediately interested, having received bills that resembled his own. Others suspected he wanted to recover from a personal mistake by creating a public campaign against a manufacturer whose equipment they still depended on. A few feared that speaking openly about service costs would damage the relationship with the dealer they needed for the coming season. Doug listened to their concerns and asked for nothing more than a comparison of actual costs. The first meeting, he said, would be about information, not confrontation.
Over the following weeks, Calvin helped prepare a worksheet that made differing invoices comparable. Labor charged for ordinary maintenance was separated from specialized diagnostic work, travel, service calls, parts, emergency response, and delays that required rented substitute equipment. Warranty work was separated from owner-paid service, and each cooperative was asked to identify the models and electronic functions that had generated the most expensive restrictions. The worksheet was dry, inconvenient, and more useful than any angry speech. By the time seven managers had returned it, a pattern appeared that resembled Holden's modeling closely enough to hold Calvin's attention.
One manager near Colby had experienced modest increases because his fleet remained under warranty and his dealer provided excellent local service. Another farther west had paid considerably more because of distance and the need for repeated specialist visits. A third had avoided some costs by training in-house staff to complete all permitted preliminary checks before requesting dealer assistance. Calvin included all three, because an alliance based only on the most extreme bills would be easy to dismiss and difficult to govern. The differences also revealed opportunities that did not require a negotiated rate reduction: sharing training resources, improving fault documentation, and planning service during less congested periods.
Margaret watched the calls begin filling Calvin's evenings again. One night, as he penciled comparisons onto a printed sheet, she asked whether he had any intention of retiring while they were both still young enough to enjoy it. Calvin looked up, smiled faintly, and said he had begun to think about retirement before Norm walked into his office. "Then perhaps Norm ought to take over your chores," she said. The remark made Calvin laugh, but he was conscious that he was asking Margaret to share another long period of work he had not anticipated.