This past week I was neck-deep in training with my carrier—another step in the march toward being cut loose to handle claims on my own. I’ve been drinking from the firehose of policy language, claim scenarios, damage thresholds, and every “what if” known to the insurance galaxy. The topic of the week? Prior damage. Fraud. Claim settlement strategy. In other words, stuff that in theory should be new and eye-opening. But let’s be honest—I’ve been around this stuff since the first time someone said, “Hey man, while it’s in the shop for the door, can you just throw the bumper in too?” Some of the SIU (Special Investigations Unit) stuff was new in a formal sense—structured training, flowcharts, official triggers. But the actual fraud itself? Oh, that’s been there since forever. Like cave paintings of shady Neanderthals asking for free mammoth dent repairs. “Happy to Commit a Felony for You, Sir.” Back in my shop-running days, I used to joke with one of my estimators: “Why yes...

  There are rabbit holes, and then there’s whatever this was. I’ve now spent more time researching luggage than I did naming two of my children. Hours. Actual hours. Possibly days. Definitely most of several nights. Time I’ll never get back. Time I could’ve spent doing literally anything else, like solving world hunger, learning Mandarin, or rearranging the garage again just to feel something. But no. I used that time to scroll, click, read, and doubt. To obsess. I want you to understand something: everybody sells luggage now. When I say everybody, I mean Home Depot sells luggage. So does Lowe’s. Somewhere out there, a guy is probably buying a new toilet and thinking, “You know what? I do need a hardshell carry-on.” I’m not asking for much. Just a set of bags that’ll last through some heavy travel without looking like they were used to smuggle bricks through a war zone. I want something clean on the outside, something smooth. No wild ridges. No giant logos embossed like I’m...

Today kicked off early—way earlier than my body prefers—but I had business in Chesterfield, South Carolina. I was there to take my Rhode Island auto appraiser’s exam (don’t ask why that happens in South Carolina—I’ve stopped questioning this system). I wasn’t allowed to bring my phone into the testing center, which was a shame because the place was a time capsule. It looked like your middle school guidance counselor’s office, complete with motivational posters straight out of the Reagan years. I swear I saw the classic “Hang in There” cat still gripping that rope like it was 1987. The test? Easiest one so far—just 40 questions. I passed it quick and collected another official-looking piece of paper with my name and yet another DMV-style headshot that looked like someone just told me I was getting drafted into the potato army. Fingerprinting & Mr. July Returns From there, I had to get fingerprinted. No ink anymore—they just roll your fingers on a digital scanner. The woman checke...

  Today was… interesting. I took a drive down to Fayetteville to knock out the New York State Auto Appraisers and Theft exam. Just saying that out loud feels like progress. Another step forward. Another state closer. But man, this one was a trip. The testing center had a whole different energy compared to my last go-round. It was packed—full of tradespeople, mostly electricians, plumbers, and general contractors. You could tell by the mountain of binders, codebooks, and reference manuals they carried like school kids on the first day back. But get this—before they were even allowed to sit down, one of the staff had to flip through every book, page by page, to make sure there wasn’t anything they shouldn’t have in there. I’m not even sure what kind of spy-level cheats they’re worried about, but the place ran like a TSA checkpoint with a caffeine habit. And speaking of security, this center wasn’t playing around. I had to turn my pockets inside out, roll up my sleeves, and even li...

  Let me tell you about one of the best perks of this new gig: they gave me a corporate credit card for all my work travel—and I get to keep all the points. Airline miles, hotel stays, rental car rewards. All mine. That’s not just a perk, that’s a full-blown opportunity. Especially for a guy like me who’s spent way too many nights deep in the loyalty program rabbit hole. I’ve read every blog, scrolled every forum, squinted through pages of terms and conditions. At this point, I hear their pitches in my head like a late-night infomercial: “Get 50,000 Hilton points just for signing up for the Hilton Honors AmEx!” “Priority boarding with the Citi AAdvantage card!” “Stack your travel rewards like a pro!” But here’s the thing—I’m not doing it. I’m not signing up for a single cobranded credit card. I’m earning this the old-fashioned way: by actually traveling. Now, I’m not crazy. I did sign up for the airline programs. I chose American Airlines as my main ride because they’ve got ...

There’s a saying: when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I was ready. And Bernie Obry appeared—with a red pen, a calm demeanor, and an uncanny ability to turn damage estimates into life lessons. I met Bernie in Poughkeepsie, back when the shop was bursting at the seams with talent, sarcasm, and Olympic-level dysfunction. Bernie managed the GEICO account and oversaw the overall flow of the shop. I handled State Farm, a rotating cast of misfit insurance companies, and cash-paying customers who “knew a guy” and wanted to settle up in quarters. From the jump, I was told to run my estimates by Bernie before finalizing them. He didn’t just review them. He graded them—like a junior high English teacher burning through a stack of overdue Huckleberry Finn essays. Out came the red pen. Lines were slashed, totals adjusted, margins filled with comments like SEE ME AFTER CLASS. It was humbling. But it made me better. We were opposites. Bernie read GQ . I read invoices I dropped mu...

There it was. Sitting in the mailbox like a coiled rattlesnake—an envelope from the North Carolina DMV. My name, typed with chilling precision, stared up at me from the white paper like it knew what it had done. I didn’t grab it right away. No, I stood there in the sun, bills and junk mail clutched limply in my left hand, as my right hovered over it like I was trying to pick up a live grenade. Because this wasn’t just mail. This was the next chapter in an odyssey that had already claimed hours of my life, pieces of my soul, and—possibly—a small part of my sanity. I had tried before. Documents submitted. Eyes tested. Papers notarized. All in pursuit of one elusive goal: the mythical, shimmering unicorn of modern bureaucracy—the Real ID. I looked to the sky. “Please, God,” I whispered. “Let this be it. Let this be the one. Let me be like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap —just once—let me leap home.” Back inside, I sat at the table like I was preparing to defuse a bomb. Titus watched with ...

  Long before I had a driver’s license, I got my start in the auto body business the same way a lot of great stories start: by crashing something. I was a kid in a tiny upstate New York town—the kind of town where the bike squad was basically The Sandlot , if you subtracted the pool, Wendy Peffercorn, and added a lot more trespassing. There were maybe eight of us with bikes, and we rode everywhere: fishing rods strapped to handlebars, jumping off the roofs of abandoned school buses onto roofs of junk cars at the junkyard, and once even staging a full Royal Rumble using old mattresses stacked under a roof ledge. How any of us survived Gen X childhood is a miracle. One day I decided to bomb down a washed-out trail where a railroad trestle used to be. Abandoned tracks were everywhere back then, and this one had a big, eroded drop-off with ruts from dirt bikes. I wasn't trying to impress anybody—I was alone, just a kid entertaining himself in a world without Candy Crush or cell phon...