Company cars and what to tell your employer

If the truck on the lot isn’t yours, the flood does not make it yours to diagnose. Company cars, take-home utilities, sales vehicles, and site trucks all have a desk that needs a sentence today.

Say what happened. Say you did not crank it. Say where it is. Send a photo of the water line and the plate. Ask who their insurer or fleet person is. Then stop being the hero mechanic.

Your personal commute is a second subject. Don’t hide the lost take-home truck because you’re embarrassed. The GPS already knows it did not move.

Do this now

Email or text your supervisor and the fleet contact: plate or unit, location, water height, and “I have not started it.”
Photograph the vehicle and the stall. Do not move it unless they tell you how.
Ask whether you should call a specific insurer or leave that to them.
Remove your personal bag, the baby seat if it is yours, and any medication. Leave their equipment unless they ask you to pull it.
Ask, in the same note, what they want you to do about getting to work tomorrow.

What to put in the first message

Short. Time. Place. “Unit 14 sat in the garage at the downtown office. Water over the floorboards. I did not start it. Keys are with me / with security. Photos attached.” That is enough for a grown-up fleet desk.

If you were on a job site in the East End or a well pad west of town, name the site. Do not write a weather essay.

Personal use and the awkward part

If the company car was at your apartment because that is the deal, say that. If you had a personal errand in it when the street went under, say that too. Inventing a “client meeting” in Meyerland at midnight helps nobody.

If your personal car also flooded, keep those claim numbers separate. Do not put the company VIN on your household NFIP email.

Tools, laptops, and the bed of the truck

Company tools in a flooded bed are their property loss. Photograph them in place. Do not take a soaked meter home “to dry” unless they ask. Your garage is not their chain of custody.

If you had personal tools mixed in, make two lists. Houstonians who work construction and energy often report a blurry pile. The blur is how people get accused of theft or get denied on their own stuff.

Your job, your commute, your hours

Ask whether they have another vehicle, a remote day, or a METRO subsidy this week. Put kids and medical constraints in the same practical tone. You are not asking for a favor so much as reporting a constraint.

If they tell you to “just start it and bring it in,” repeat that you will not crank a flooded engine and ask for a tow vendor. Put that refusal in writing. It is a safety sentence, not attitude.