What do I do for a living?

I total cars.

Okay, let me qualify that a little…

I had just moved back to Sacramento from Phoenix in the fall of 1995, and did so without a job. I needed to find one, and quickly (something I’m sure my two roommates were hoping for, too). I started with some temp jobs during the search, and started scanning the newspaper (as this was a time before that wacky new “internet” thing caught on). But the question was, what was I going to do for a living? I had dropped out of college when I realized my degree program wasn’t what I wanted and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life (please take note…dropping out of college is NOT the proper solution to that problem. Take it from me). I had just spent a couple of years working as the 800-number answer man for the Dial Corp, answering questions and taking complaints about soap, detergent, air fresheners and, interestingly, canned meats (Dial’s a very diversified company). Customer service was what I loved and what I had experience in, but where was I going to make use of that, and make a decent living doing it?

One Sunday, I found an ad for entry-level claims adjusters as USAA.

Car insurance. Interesting.

Long story short? Got hired in January of ’96, and been in the business ever since, having worked for several of the big industry leaders. And I still am trying to figure out how that all happened. But it’s what I do, better or worse. I’m a car wreck guy.

Specifically, I’m currently a total loss evaluator, something I’ve been doing for a few years now. Let’s say you drive your car into a tree. No, scratch that. You’re a much better driver than that, aren’t you? Let’s say some drunk plowed into you and really jacked up your ride. It got towed away by the police, you called your best friend to come pick you up and take you home, and, the next day, after you calmed down a little, you called your insurance company. You started a claim. You gave all the details, and your side of the story. Some liability adjuster (something I used to do) took it all down, and while they started their investigation (trying to get the police report, reach the drunk’s insurance company, assuming he had insurance, talk to witnesses, etc), they sent an appraiser out to look at your vehicle. That appraiser totaled up all the repair costs, and quickly surmised that it cost more to fix your car than your car was likely worth. So it was then decided that your car was a total loss. Your file, then, got transferred to me. Me…the guy whose job it is to tell you how little your car is actually worth.

I determine vehicle values, and I do this a number of ways. My job here, you see, is to find out the fair market value of your vehicle – that is, its value right before drunky boy smashed it up. Depending on the age of your car, the first thing I’ll likely do is run what’s called a CCC report. I take all the information that the appraiser took down for me – the year/make/model of your car, the mileage, the options, the pre-loss condition (were your seats all ratty and torn up before the wreck, or were they in swell condition because you treat your car better than you would a spouse?) – and I call that all in to CCC (the company name). They run a report based on a HUGE database they have (updated daily) of cars selling at dealerships and in private advertisements. They find out the average price, and they make adjustments to it based on your options (oh, you’ve got the sunroof? That’s $400 extra on the value, dog!) and mileage (but you’ve got over 200,000 miles on it. That’s $800 off. Bummer). I get a fax of that report, I add in your local sales tax and some title/registration fees we include, and I give you your total loss offer. Depending on how that goes, I’m either your best friend, or you’ve got some choice things to say about my mother, and the horse she rode in on.

Now, some companies out there will only allow an evaluator like me to use that report, end of story. That’s the value, and that’s all you get. Thank God I’m currently working for a company that realizes it’s not always that black and white. That report can sometimes be flawed. There are people making that report, and people can get lazy. I always review the report and see how they came up with those numbers. If they based it on two cars that are selling over 1000 miles away from your home, for example, I can be pretty sure that’s not an accurate estimation of what your car would be worth in your neighborhood. Sometimes that report’s dead-on, don’t get me wrong. But I look a little deeper, particularly if I give you the offer and you explode and go “What?! My car’s worth two times that!!” My job (and thank the Department of Insurance for this) is not to lowball you. My job is to come as close as possible to what the car is worth in your area. And if there’s evidence that shows the report I got is off, then I’m going to find that evidence and correct things accordingly.

The internet is my biggest tool. I can pull up Autotrader.com or Cars.com and punch in your vehicle info and get a look at local selling vehicles myself. I can also go to the official N.A.D.A. site and look at your estimated value. What I CAN’T do is use Kelly Blue Book. This is a problem, because this is often the first place people check themselves once they find out their car is a total. K.B.B. – and it even states this right on their site – is a starting point for negotiations with dealers. Dealers will charge this, knowing that you’re going to talk them down. This does not reflect what vehicles ACTUALLY sell for. And actual value is what we’re looking for. So people will often jump on that site and look for high retail value on their car and expect that. I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. Chances are your car was not showroom-ready and in immaculate, flawless condition, which is what high retail assumes. So just a tip – your insurance company is not going to base your value on this, so you’ll save yourself a lot of frustration by getting that out of your head from the get-go.

Other things might affect the value of your car, and this is a good reason to keep receipts. Generally, if you just had the brakes worked on, that’s not going to affect the value, as maintenance work usually doesn’t make a difference. But if you recently put in a new engine or new transmission? Those I might be able to use. New tires? Depending on how new, I can work with that, too. And there are other, less obvious factors that I take into consideration. Up in the hills of Washington, for example, 4x4 trucks sell at a much higher rate than at the bottom of the hill. I only know this from experience over the years, and will keep it in mind. There may be a collectors market happening for your vehicle – Honda Accords may be really hot in some areas where people are fixing them up and living out their Fast and the Furious fantasies. Classic cars like 60s Mustangs may have a whole collectors’ market angle to them, too, and specialized web pages for selling them among that community. Lots of things to consider, and all things you should keep in mind to present to your total loss evaluator when you know your claim is going that way. Me, I feel it’s my job to do that homework for you. Other evaluators feel the burden of proof, and therefore the research, is on you. So if you want to get the right dollar amount, use your web-surfing skills and back your theory up. This will increase your chances of getting the deal you want.

Here’s another thing not many people know about total losses. You have the option to keep the vehicle, even if it’s a total. Let’s say you have an ’89 Toyota pickup. The value isn’t that high, and the damages are just enough to where the insurance company has to total it (this is known as the total loss threshold, by the way. It varies by state, but usually, if your repair costs are 70% of your vehicles actual cash value (pre-tax value), insurance companies are required to total it). But you may still be able to fix the truck on your own. You can request an owner retention. In this case, I would request a salvage bid on your truck. This is the value, basically, that we would get for selling it to the salvage yard after the claim. It can vary a lot by the popularity of the vehicle (or its parts) and the condition it’s in after the wreck. But let’s assume your truck is worth $1800.00. Let’s say I got my salvage bid back, and that value is $200.00. I would then subtract the salvage value from the settlement value, and you’d get a check for $1600.00 (plus the tax and stuff) AND get to keep the truck. You can then put that $1600 toward repairs (which may even be enough to fix it all), or keep driving the beat-up truck and pocket the dough. But the catch is, in most states, you do have to put a salvage title on your truck. This means you get a new title that’s stamped “salvage”, which lets future buyers know that it was totaled at some point, even if it’s all fixed. This can reduce your retail value, so that’s something to keep in mind. If you plan to just keep that ’89 truck and keep driving it until it falls apart, then this is a good deal for you. If you do this with a 2005 truck, you’re going to get pretty screwed when you try to sell it to someone later. Just something to keep in mind.

Do I like what I do for a living? Yeah, in general, I do. There’s a certain amount of job satisfaction involved in helping people out – which is how I see what I do. People are in a bad way, stuck without a car, and my job is to take care of them and get them in some new wheels asap and get them back on the road, and do my best to make the whole process as painless as possible for them. Do I get yelled at a lot? Well, yeah. Comes with the job. But I never take it personally. I’ve been in the business a long time, but not long enough to where I’m so jaded that I forget that the person I’m talking to is generally the one who has been wronged, and is being forced to go through all this, and have suffered enough without me making it worse. I do get frustrated with people who are completely unreasonable. I’m doing my best to be reasonable, and I expect it to go both ways. If someone wants $5000.00 for their $1000.00 car and have nothing to back that number up with except that they picked that number out of a hat, there’s not a lot I can do. I work with people as best I can, and there’s a lot of give and take, and it can get pretty tense sometimes. But it usually works out okay, and I get that sense of satisfaction from putting the claim to bed and doing so fairly. It’s not a me-versus-them for me, and I take no pleasure in “winning”. I just want to work within the boundaries I have to, do things fairly and legally, and hopefully end my relationship with that customer on a good note, and not leave them scarred for life by a bad insurance experience (which many a person has had). Not always easy, but that’s part of the challenge, and I do enjoy a challenge. As a matter of fact, I found out, at some point with my latest company, that management was specifically sending problem customers to me because of the way I handle them. Not much of a prize, but it is a compliment, I think. I let people yell, I let them insult me, I let them vent, and I continue to treat them with respect and fairness throughout the process, regardless. Some people in customer service work love telling their stories of how they hung up on a customer when that irate customer started swearing at them and yelling. Me? I think getting yelled at is part of what I get paid for. And frankly, if you got rammed into by some guy on this third D.U.I., and your car that you loved is gone forever, and you’re having to jump through all the hoops of D.M.V. paperwork and tracking down your title and all the bother of having to shop for and buy a new car when all you were trying to do was drive to the store and get a box of Cheerios, I think you DESERVE to be able to yell at someone. Might as well be me. I don’t mind. If you’re cool with it all by the end of the process, then that’s my reward, and that’s when I feel like I’m doing my job right.

People in insurance are an interesting lot. No one really CHOOSES this is a career. It just sort of happens. Usually someone’s just gotten out of college, they can’t find a job within their chosen field, and they realize that they can get into insurance and make some decent money with some good benefits while they’re waiting for something else to come along. That’s when they’ve got you. You just NEVER seem to be able to get back out of it again. Claims people are constantly overworked (insurance companies never seem to hire enough people to handle all the claims), generally bitter, and can easily get a bad opinion of humanity as a whole – as we tend to get not only yelled at, but lied to all day. Heaven FORBID you get into bodily injury or “general liability” claims. Those are the folks I really pity. They see humanity at its greedy worst. “That golf ball landed right on my foot! I want $50,000.00 for my pain and suffering!” The scammers tend to cast a bad light on all claimants and can really kill any sympathy in a claims handler. The minute someone gets in a 5mph rear-ender, they think they’ve hit the lottery, and they grab their neck and start seeing a massage therapist three times a week and want millions. And we, the claims handlers, are the ones standing between them and their new life of leisure. And we realize that we’re the bad guys. While we’re just folks trying to settle a claim fairly, we represent the Big Bad Insurance Company. It’s not fun being the bad guy for a living. But, as I said…it’s a pretty decent living, and beats flipping burgers, so we generally stick around. And many of us drink. Heavily.

So car wrecks have become my career. Didn’t mean for it to happen, but hey…I’m happy to have a job, and happy to be in a career where I can move around and find work almost anywhere, and one that’s not going away, no matter what the market or the economy is like. I don’t care what Wall Street is doing, people will ALWAYS ram their cars into things. And when they do? I’ll be there.

My name’s O’Connell.

And I total cars.

And for the record? My mother doesn’t ride a horse.