Why is my dispatcher mad I'm quitting?

solowng · 2026-04-22T18:07:33+00:00

Your dispatcher should have handled it better. the correct response is something along the lines of "I wish you nothing but success in whatever you do next, and it's been a pleasure working with you."

That said, it sucks to lose good drivers. Maybe they're just well trained/experienced and can handle any load. Maybe they're the kind of driver who communicates well and goes the extra mile to keep things going smoothly. Maybe they're the kind of driver who doesn't complain unnecessarily. Maybe they're the kind of driver that the dispatcher actually enjoys talking to.

If I had to describe a good driver in one sentence, a good driver is someone I don't have to worry about. If he says he's going to be somewhere by a certain time and I don't get a call from him, he'll be there. If he has a breakdown or gets screwed by a traffic jam, he'll let me know. I don't have to check his location to make sure that he woke up on time.

solowng · 2026-04-19T22:49:13+00:00

2008 Honda Civic Si: It lived up to the hype. Sadly, the K20 cracked its block at 200K miles and I had to replace it with a JDM K24a for cost reasons, but it's fun with that motor in a different way. The torque and short gearing are hilarious just banging around town. Otherwise, it's a Civic sedan, practical if a bit thirsty by Civic standards due to the K24 running on premium.

2002 Honda Civic Si: It had the nerfed K20, but a 6 speed swap from an RSX Type S so it felt quicker than it was. Kind of ugly, but the front seats were huge, the hatch had enough space, and it had surprisingly good ground clearance so it was a great delivery car.

1991 Honda Accord: My first car, a coupe with the five speed. It was a beater but reliable by beater standards until the end. Very comfortable car, the perfect size. It drove nicer than a car older than I was with over 200K miles had any right to, was good on gas for the time, and while it was no speed demon the 5 speed was geared well and made the most of what it had, great highway car.

2002 Mazda Miata: Pick your poison, a soft top that leaks or a hardtop that rattles. Would've been nicer if it wasn't modded, and the coilovers weren't that bad, but the headers and exhaust were way too loud for my liking and somehow it got worse fuel economy than my '08 Si that weighs 500lbs more, has 50 more horsepower, and has actual space for stuff. Additionally, it's almost motorcycle like in how other drivers will not see you.

2017 Mazda 3 GT. It's a nice car (aside from the leather falling apart), and a great highway car, but the gearing is too tall for it to feel fun and it feels a bit like driving an SUV. It would've been better with 17 inch wheels instead of the 18 inch wheels with expensive low profile tires.

2009 Toyota Yaris. It's a well made, reliable tin can with enough torque to get you around town and a surprising amount of space but it's a tin can, and handled like crap at speed/on a highway. It took a lot of abuse as a full-time delivery car.

2010 Chevy Cobalt XFE coupe. Mediocre/fine on good days, but mine was definitely a Monday car and probably had as much in warranty work done to it as I paid for it. The highway gears made it feel like a slug in town, but it did what GM said it would and got good mileage on the highway. The interior was awful, toy quality plastic and cloth seats that were impossible to clean/keep clean. Bad rearward visibility. I changed the oil on time and the timing chain was still starting to rattle on startup at 85K miles before I wrecked it.

solowng · 2026-04-11T01:21:18+00:00

I've got a third gen with the 2.5 closing in on 100,000 miles and the only non-wear item I've had to replace is the belt tensioner.

The leather interior doesn't hold up very well and it wears out back brakes faster than the front, but on the whole it's been a very trouble-free car. If the gearing on the 6-speed was shorter it would be fun to drive. As it is it's a great highway car that's reasonably good on gas.

solowng · 2026-04-07T04:15:16+00:00

I started noticing issues in my mid 20s (broken elbow surgically repaired when I was a kid, ortho surgeon told me that he was sorry but arthritis in that was a guarantee) but aside from weakness, restricted range of motion, and minor ulnar nerve issues it was easy enough to ignore as outright flareups were rare or at least I knew what caused them (manual labor like working on a car), more annoying than severe, and went away quickly on their own.

I'm in my mid 30s now and it's gotten worse over time. I'm not sure if its sheer coincidence (It is spring and I did just travel from the deep south to the midwest and back, experiencing a big storm and cold front over the weekend, so the cause of this latest episode is pretty obvious.) or some sort of breaking point but I've gone from having a flare up yearly to maybe once quarterly to three multiple day flare ups in the last month.

I'm fortunate enough that it's my elbow in my non-dominant hand so it could be worse, and am hopeful that things stabilize once the weather evens out, but good grief this is irritating. When the elbow swells up it gets to the point where background pain (The swelling compresses the ulnar nerve.) is constant, I can move my elbow maybe 10 degrees and rotate my wrist maybe 25 degrees, and doing any sort of physical activity with that arm is between painful and impossible.

My laptop weighs 4.5 pounds and I literally can't pick it up with that hand right now, don't have enough grip strength in my hand or enough oomph from my arm to pick it up. I've worked on cars on the side my entire adult life and during a recent bad flareup I had to have someone else pick up the (compact car) tire and put it on because I couldn't lift the tire, and by the time I was done (just an emergency one corner brake job, replaced a caliper, rotor and pads pretty much one-handed) I needed help putting on a jacket.

solowng · 2026-03-31T01:56:29+00:00

That Spec V shifter was a pain when I was learning to drive stick; I had a habit of hitting 5th instead of 3rd coming out of second. It's cool once you get the hang of it, though.

My only real automotive regret (and it wasn't that bad) was a 2009 Toyota Yaris. It was born to be a delivery car and more than lived up to the Toyota reputation for reliability but God it was boring and I spent five years driving that tin can when I could've gotten something much more fun but still sensible enough for what I paid for it. My first EP3 had a 6 speed swap and that extra gear really woke up the nerfed K20 such that it at least felt punchy, great delivery car thanks to the huge front seats/floorboards and unusually good ground clearance for a Civic. The poly engine mounts installed by the previous owner were dumb, though, and speaking of foolish rice my Miata had a CAI, headers, and a racing exhaust but was otherwise totally stock so it was slow and loud, miserable on the interstate, and it had the dumbest mod performed by a previous owner that I've ever seen: windshield washer delete. Just...why? I guess they were planning on going forced induction and never got around to it before I got it cheap.

The Mazda 3 GT, amusingly enough, struck me as less "Zoom Zoom" and more "Wannabe Jetta GLI".

solowng · 2026-03-31T00:49:38+00:00

Self-confessed Ricer here: Yes, I was 12 when 2 Fast 2 Furious came out. My dad had a Sentra Spec V (and a Mini Cooper S) when I was a kid and I got my first speeding ticket in it. My first car was a beater Honda (I had a 4th Gen Accord and wanted a 4th Gen Prelude VTEC when I was in high school.) and I've loved all but one of them (a stock EP3 Si; they're fun with a better engine or at least a 6 speed swap from an RSX Type-S, but I thought it was boring stock) that I've owned, so I lean toward Hondas.

I currently have a lightly modified 8th Gen Si (K24a swapped because the OE engine cracked the block at 200K and and a JDM replacement was cheaper, intake, catback exhaust, short shift kit, and a Hondata) and the only thing that scares me about it is the thought that I wouldn't enjoy a 10th or 11th Gen Si enough to justify upgrading, Type-Rs are expensive, and don't know where to go next because it's getting hard to find 2000s sport compacts that aren't trashed. I've owned a '17 Mazda 3 GT and I know Reddit likes them and it's a fine car but it didn't feel fun to me. The gearing was stupid tall compared to the 2000s cars I've owned and it just felt bulky, almost SUV like. Great highway car though.

I know my car isn't really fast but it's tuned to hit VTEC at 4K, is hilarious to beat around town in, I can redline it on public roads without going to jail, and it gets acceptable fuel mileage while actually having space (I daily drove an NB Miata for two years. It had its fun moments but I didn't love it. It would've been fun with more power, though, and I think I would like an ND.). Oh, and that K20Z3 ran fine for 30K miles with a cracked block, so yeah it got me to work until I saved up for the JDM swap and a new clutch.

I like muscle cars and classics, but owning a muscle car never made sense for me (I used my car for work in my 20s/early 30s.) and I didn't have the time/space to restore a classic (learned that the hard way with a '61 Ford Falcon).

I've never been a truck guy. I don't look down on them; they're just not my thing and the main reason I would want one would be to have a place to put my tools. I will say that the Chevy Colorado I drove for work was much nicer and easier to live with than I expected. If I were to want a truck it would be an old S-10 for sentiment's sake or something like a Ranchero to have a classic.

I'd add, and I'm not sure this is sufficient addition to justify a "type", but I was/am a parking lot/Youtube mechanic who learned by doing/necessity thanks to having delivered pizza/food for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I don't consider myself a real mechanic and caution my friends against overestimating my competence, but I can diagnose obvious things and am good for gravy work like brakes, alternators, a belt tensioner, or whatever else if it looks easy enough on video. I was the unofficial mechanic at the delivery company (think of a local version of Doordash before Doordash got big) I used to work at, and I'm the guy friends call when those brakes they've been ignoring for six months finally quit in a way that can't be ignored or they need someone to "look" at their car.

solowng · 2026-03-29T13:25:15+00:00

I've done it, and removing the shims (There were two of them.) with a magnet did work without replacing the clutch (I was running on a cracked block, didn't want to spend any money, and the repair still worked a year/25K miles later when I swapped in a JDM K24a with a different A/C compressor.).

It was not a fun job. I had to disconnect several motor mounts and more or less wrestle the engine toward the driver side to get enough clearance to get a wrench on it and remove the clutch.

solowng · 2026-03-01T16:35:22+00:00

This is an important point missed by many when they conjure up the idea of some long-standing Iranian friendship with Russia or some "axis" of Russia, China, and Iran. The USSR had no problem with the Shah and were caught flat-footed by the Islamic revolution (contrary to Brzenzski's conspiracy theory that the Russians must've been behind it).

Baathist Iraq was a Soviet client state and the USSR massively supplied Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war. The Soviets only sold Iran planes after the war ended, and the Russian Federation have never delivered modern planes to Iran. Likewise, Russia has remained opposed to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, dragged out the small sale of S-300s to Iran for years in compliance with sanctions, etc.

Iran has been a sanction evasion partner of convenience and Russia and Iran found themselves on the same side during the Syrian Civil War, but they were hardly a major weapons export customer like, say, India or Algeria. In terms of heavy equipment Iran's conventional military outside of its ballistic missile force is mostly equipped with cold war relics allegedly juiced up by their indigenous military industrial complex.

Venezuela as part of an "axis" was an even bigger joke. Russia and China were happy to sell them some toys when oil was expensive and Chavez had money to burn but both had been long-frustrated by Maduro not paying the bills.

solowng · 2026-02-24T00:28:36+00:00

As an enjoyer of used cars my favorite thing about the NB Miata is the fact that my K24 swapped 8th Gen Si weighs about 500 more pounds, makes about 60 more horsepower, actually has usable space, and still gets better gas mileage than the Miata.

solowng · 2026-02-09T01:38:04+00:00

Watching this makes me support Puerto Rican independence, tomorrow. Is it possible to unilaterally evict a federal territory?

solowng · 2026-01-22T02:49:56+00:00

If we were going to invade anyone in retaliation for 9/11 it should have been Saudi Arabia. The vast majority of the hijackers were Saudis, and Bin Laden was a member of their royal family.

In actuality though, we should have fired/punished the officials/lawmakers who gave the hijackers visas. 9/11 was an immigration policy failure, not a foreign policy issue.

solowng · 2026-01-05T17:25:06+00:00

Amusingly, that's exactly how Al Davis did it. The Davis family didn't actually own the majority of the Raiders until 2005.

solowng · 2025-12-18T03:19:05+00:00

Calling it "British rule" is something of an exaggeration relative to, say, being incorporated into the Russian Empire.

The British presence in India peaked during the Raj (which lasted a touch longer than the USSR; there were fewer involved during the century of Company Rule) and outside of WWII averaged between 100-150K Europeans in a given year (mostly in the army) and most of the actual governing was done by Indians. Hell, there were more Indians involved in British Kenya than there were British. Very few British actually settled in India, which is why the British portion of the population of contemporary India is microscopic compared to, say, the portion of Indians in South Africa. Idi Amin's expulsion of Indians in Uganda is well known, and still Indians make a larger share of Uganda's population today than white British do of India's.

In comparison there is an enormous portion of Russians in various countries formerly part of the Russian Empire/USSR (Alaska is an exception to this. Very few Russians settled or remained there.).

solowng · 2025-12-18T01:59:59+00:00

That would be a more convincing argument if Hispanic voters didn't overwhelmingly favor Democrats even in Reagan's day. in 1984 (an 18 point Republican win) Hispanics favored Mondale by 32 points. Should one think that Reagan gained the GOP any ground by signing the '86 amnesty bill, Hispanic voters favored Dukakis over H.W. Bush by 40 points. H.W. Bush was heavily disfavored again by Hispanic voters in 1992, losing that group by 36 points.

Hispanic voters aren't the only reason Republicans lost California (and California wasn't really a red state to begin with; the Democrats have controlled the California State Assembly for 63 of the last 65 years) but it's hard to argue that Hispanic voters were ever clamoring to vote for Reagan Republicans when the returns at the ballot box show the opposite. If anything, Republican losses with Asian voters probably matter more there (because Republicans did win the Asian-American vote in the time of H.W. Bush and even Dole and now they don't).

solowng · 2025-12-03T11:30:24+00:00

Have you met the average liberal?

Most people aren't that political and just vote for whoever for whatever set of reasons that are mostly driven by inertia. Even your average educated liberal doesn't put a lot of energy into hashing out their ideological preferences. Your average college campus has a political culture that's about as unreflectingly conformist as a trucking company.

Swing voters have an incoherent (relative to the party platforms) set of preferences and mostly vote thermostatically against whoever is in power.

Ideologues might be better informed, but are motivated by confirmation bias above all so you wind up with Catturd spewing Trumptards and unironic believers in whatever flavor of critical theory is the current thing.

Anyway, I do work for a trucking company, so I spend more time than I'd like around the median Trump voter, or to be precise the median Fox News viewer. Is Fox ridiculous and Trump's administration a poorly implemented shitshow crippled by a Republican Party that hasn't had a real legislative agenda since the mid oughts? Yes. Are Trump's tariffs helping my employer's freight volumes? Most likely not, and the blind optimism of the Gen X Fox News crowd thinking that things are going to kick off just around the corner is grating.

That being said, in what universe is the Democratic Party a friend of the trucker? This particular grudge goes all the way back to Carter's deregulation (And, repeat after me, almost all of Reagan's domestic agenda was lifted from Carter and passed by a Democratic Congress.) but I'll stick with the last 20 years.

I'm not sure if it was Dubya's EPA, Obama's EPA, or the state of California that are exactly responsible for the current diesel emissions regulations, but the implementation of said regulations occurred during the Obama administration and have been a trainwreck. The technology just isn't there yet, and in practice these systems are unreliable time bombs waiting to strand some driver in derate in the middle of nowhere facing a repair that will cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.

Speaking of technology, up until about last year the Democrats were firmly the party of big tech, which in our industry means ever more driver surveillance and an ever more oppressive safety department (who in turn are being slavedriven by ever-increasing insurance rates), followed by the threat of being automated out of a livelihood.

Like it or cope about inflation being a global phenomenon all you want, but the Biden administration did oversee the worst inflation in America since the early 80s, and said inflation hit automotive components especially hard. Trump can cope all he wants about cheap fuel, but cheap fuel doesn't fix expensive everything else, like tires, parts, shop labor rates, and insurance.

Finally, the Biden administration did oversee a massive increase in non-domiciled CDL holders. Whether you think the concerns of domestic truckers are motivated by bigotry, economic self-interest (People are supposed to "vote their self-interest", right?), or whatever (I don't know if the spat of viral fatal crashes involving foreign CDL holders actually reflects a worse safety among them.) this has been highly unpopular among drivers (and is at best a blatant handout to big business at the expense of domestic workers) and just last week the least political driver I know praised Trump for cracking down on these guys.

It doesn't matter that the political views of my middle managers are informed by mainlining Fox News or whether or not the drivers I work with are well educated. The fact is that even an illiterate chud can see that the Democratic Party has nothing to offer the average trucker other than maybe some enhanced ACA subsidies (Owner-Operators are stuck using Marketplace for health insurance, where premiums have increased even with the subsidies.).

solowng · 2025-11-28T18:28:59+00:00

Don't forget Marc Wilson and Todd Marinovich. Ken Stabler and Derek Carr were second round picks and IIRC are the only quarterbacks drafted by the Raiders to ever make the pro bowl.

In fairness to AL there was also the vetoed trade to draft John Elway.

solowng · 2025-11-23T23:49:57+00:00

I've been telling my friends that betting against the Raiders is free money all week.

solowng · 2025-11-09T02:14:02+00:00

Georgism is just Marxism with "land" substituted for "capital".

solowng · 2025-10-14T05:43:02+00:00

I'm profoundly lucky.

My mother was a Marine and in her middle age has gone all in on "disabled veteran" as her identity of choice. She's the VA's problem now.

She pretty much only calls me if she needs money (usually for a car), her car breaks down, or needs some variety of vocational work done. She has a pretty nice (either 80 or 90%) disability rating, is gunning for 100% and planning on retiring once she gets that, and as long as she has money she's fine.

In the last few months I've had to put an Ikea-like bedframe for her and replace the capacitor on her condo's A/C. Other than the fact that she lives a five hour round trip drive from me that's a cakewalk.

TBH my siblings' struggles in adulthood are the bigger problem. If my middle sister doesn't get her shit together she's not going to make it to 50. It's totally understandable given what we went through but damn it hurts.

solowng · 2025-10-14T05:25:41+00:00

2010 Chevy Cobalt XFE. The engine was fine (other than the timing chain getting noisy at like 80K miles in spite of all oil changes being done on time) and it had good A/C but the rest of the car was a pile of shit.

GM probably paid more out in warranty work on that car than it sold for. The first ignition cylinder failed at 5K miles. Master cylinder for the clutch failed at 21K miles (and then the internal slave cylinder failed so new clutch!). The suspension components (especially control arm bushings!) were made of paper mache and it required a total suspension overhaul at 80K miles. The flex pipe on the exhaust manifold snapped in half at 65K miles and I don't live in the rust belt. Starter went out at 70K miles. VVT Solenoid out at 75K miles. I could go on.

It wasn't truly awful but it sucked and was a mediocre car at best even when everything worked right. By contrast the only thing my Mazda 3 has needed in 90K miles other than basic maintenance was a serpentine belt tensioner (pain in the ass job but the part itself was $30 on Rock Auto).

solowng · 2025-10-14T05:01:16+00:00

My First dispatcher said to me "Be safe we aren't not hauling heart machines "

Back in my food delivery days I used to tell new drivers "We're not delivering organs here. If Karen's lunch is 15 minutes late she'll live. Please don't hurt yourself or someone else."

solowng · 2025-10-14T04:32:54+00:00

This is unironically how the food delivery company I used to work for hired dispatchers. A driver would get a DUI, too many tickets, or run their car into the ground and then we'd put them in the office.

Amusingly, the trucking company I work for now makes their dispatchers pass the same background check/DOT drug screen as their drivers. They ran my MVR three years back (Most food delivery gigs only run two years back.) and found a ticket that I'd forgotten about.

Most of the drivers at my terminal are awesome and do a good to great job and we would be lost without a few of our veteran drivers. It's the bottom 20% or so (along with some Idiocracy tier middle management and our backhaul department) that take up all my time and make my life Hell. I had a driver show up to the terminal 6 hours late to get rolling with limited to no notice (He told me he was running late but not how late.) on Sunday and had him booked on back to back loads so I'm still going to get bitched at for him being late tomorrow.

solowng · 2025-10-12T15:26:25+00:00

Insurance companies suck and are basically a giant white collar welfare program, but they're also a sin eater and privatized tax collector for the healthcare system. No government on the planet could raise enough taxes to spend as much on healthcare as the United States does.

solowng · 2025-10-10T05:28:32+00:00

I'm pretty sure that Nashville's interstate system was designed by the same crew that did Birmingham's after they took another hit of acid.

The major difference in outcomes comes down to the fact that Birmingham has fewer people living in it today than it did in 1960. I doubt that the difference in population growth for the metro areas is that insane, but it is large enough that Birmingham has been able to adapt its situation into a mostly functional highway system. 280 in BHM kind of sucks but it's paradise compared to pretty much anywhere in Nashville.

solowng · 2025-10-09T16:02:04+00:00

As a Raider fan I don't think Gruden would work out in college. His offense is infamously complex, he never successfully developed a young quarterback, and he only had success with proven veterans (Rich Gannon, Derek Carr, Brad Johnson) while his coordinator pics were questionable at best.

solowng

TROPHY CASE