> Why should police departments do automobile maintenance? Because, as we have seen, outsourcing these kinds of services is rarely cheaper and never actually b

> Why should police departments do automobile maintenance? Because, as we have seen, outsourcing these kinds of services is rarely cheaper and never actually better. By keeping it in house, you can hire people correctly for the volume of maintenance you do. Your people become very good at the specific needs and faults of your system (see: Why SF firefighters make and repair their own ladders). And when you genuinely need something, you can redeploy your labor. All outsourcing does is create an extra middleman whose mouth you must feed and whose workers you have no control over. Executives, of course, loved outsourcing as it let them crack up the unions.