18/07/2026
My first call at 5:30 am wasn't to the police. It was to a client to tell him I couldn't come.
That call cost me more than the ute did.
I've been in plumbing for eleven years.
Started as an apprentice at nineteen, went out on my own at twenty-six, built it slowly — the right way, I thought.
Good reputation. Repeat clients. Word of mouth.
The ute wasn't just transport.
I want to be clear about that from the start, because when people who haven't run their own trade business hear "my car got stolen" they think about inconvenience.
About insurance paperwork and rental cars and hassle.
They don't think about what I thought about at 5:31am standing on an empty driveway in the dark.
They don't think about the Rinnai hot water unit in the tray that I'd picked up the afternoon before for an 8am installation.
Or the $4,200 in Ridgid pipe tools that lived in the locked aluminium toolbox I'd bolted through the tub floor.
Or the two-week-old Dewalt grinder still in its case. Or the apprentice I'd taken on eight months earlier who I now had to call and tell not to come in.
They don't think about the client — a property manager who sent me six to eight jobs a year, reliable work, good payer — and what it means to call him before sunrise and say the words I'd never said in eleven years.
"I can't make it today."
..
