What a 'Derrick' Search Taught Me: Derrick Rose House, Derrick Brown Lawyer, and a Better Way to Buy

I'm an office administrator for a 62-person oilfield services company. I manage all equipment and supply purchasing—roughly $350,000 annually across 9 vendors. I report to both operations and finance, so every purchase gets justified twice.

In December 2024, I needed to replace a corroded component on a 72-foot derrick. I did what I tell our engineers not to do: I typed one word into a search engine.

The first page gave me a Derrick Rose house tour, a Derrick Brown lawyer profile, a kids' clothing site called Eddie Kids, and a forum post asking 'what's the difference between a hawk and a handsaw?' By page four, I was hungry enough to click a food ad. The actual drilling derrick was nowhere in sight.

I laughed. Then I realized this is how my purchase requests come in every week. Vague, incomplete, and full of assumptions.

The Real Problem Isn't Bad Search Results

The surface problem is that 'derrick' is a terrible keyword. It's a basketball player, a surname, an oilfield structure, and apparently the start of a Hamlet quote. The deeper problem is that we expect one word to carry a full specification.

When our field engineer sends 'need a pump ASAP,' they know which pump. I don't. The vendor doesn't. Google doesn't. All we have is a word. And a word is not a product.

I should note: this isn't about people being careless. It's about systems that reward brevity. Search engines optimize for popularity. 'Derrick Rose' gets more searches in a day than 'drilling derrick' gets in a month. That doesn't make my search wrong. It makes it incomplete.

The same thing happens with vendor quotes. In October 2024, I compared two quotes for a 'standard derrick.' One was $58,000. The other was $74,000. I almost discarded the expensive one. Then I aligned the line items. The cheaper quote didn't include the crown block, the water table, or the racking platform. It wasn't the same derrick. It just had the same name.

When I compared those two quotes side by side, I finally understood: a keyword is not a specification.

What a Vague Request Actually Costs

The $16,000 difference between those quotes should have been a clue. But my own shortcut cost more in the long run.

In April 2024, we needed a replacement pin for a derrick base. I knew we'd ordered the same part before. I didn't pull the old spec. I just wrote 'same as last time.' The part arrived two inches too short. It looked close enough at a glance, but onsite nothing lined up. We had to stop the rig for almost two days.

I remember the invoice number because I had to explain it to my manager: $2,400 for the wrong part, plus $1,100 in lost crew time. I knew I should have checked the model number. I thought 'what are the odds? It's the same vendor.' The odds caught up with me.

Skip the 5-minute verification, and you get a 5-day correction. That's true no matter what you're buying.

The Fix Wasn't More Searching. It Was Better Specs.

Everything I'd read about procurement said to get multiple quotes. That's good advice, but it misses the point if every quote describes a different product. What changed for me was the spec checklist.

Now, before I type anything into a search bar, I write down what the item actually is: dimensions, capacity, material, connection type, and applicable safety standard. If I can't describe a part in three sentences, I probably shouldn't be buying it yet.

The 12-point checklist I created after the $2,400 mistake has saved us an estimated $8,000 in potential rework. Five minutes of verification beats five days of correction. Every time.

I also ask vendors to put their claims in writing. Per FTC advertising guidelines (ftc.gov, accessed January 2025), claims about what a product can do need to be truthful and substantiated. A written spec sheet isn't a courtesy—it's the basis for the deal. If a vendor says 'this derrick meets the API spec,' I ask them to show me where.

What I Do Now Instead of Searching

Before I order anything, I run through a short list:

• Start with the old part number or original spec sheet if one exists.
• Write down at least 5 criteria the product must meet.
• Search by those criteria, not by a one-word name.
• Ask the vendor what they call the item and compare terminology.
• If a vendor can't provide a written specification, I move on.

This applies to more than drilling equipment. Office supplies, IT hardware, safety gear, snacks for the training room—all of it. Snacks are the one category where 'hungry' is a valid spec. For everything else, it isn't.

And no, I still don't know what's the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. Actually, I looked it up: the phrase comes from Hamlet. It's a way of saying 'I know what's what.' That's exactly what a good procurement process does.

So next time someone asks for 'a derrick,' ask which one. Derrick Rose's house is not in our budget. And Derrick Brown would be a great lawyer to know if this purchase goes sideways—but I'd rather not need him.