Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

As an engine and heavy truck mechanic, ive only seen one that really stood out. I was assigned to work on a Kenworth T700 after a major accident. This is a large, commercial truck from around 2012 that has loads of bells and whistles to handle smog and emissions. The only problem was I couldnt get my laptop to read anything from the onboard computer that indicated any problems. Things like the radiator completely missing, or the crank case failure, were completely ignored. I could pull the air sensors and everything still reported A-OK, like the truck just rolled off the factory line. I bought a new cable, assuming it was a problem on my end, but no.

So trucks these days have whats called a urea tank. It gets injected into diesel streams to knock out harmful pollutants and its required by federal law. My truck had in its place an oily rag and a few twists of bailing wire. but...my computer tells me the urea tank is topped up and ready to go!

Turns out the last shop this truck had been to was investigated by the EPA, NHTSA, and FBI and convicted for hacking ECM's. They were even forging certifications and licenses. The driver of the T700 I was working on had a revoked class C license and had never received formal training. Long story short, the chop shop owner was cooling his heels on a 12 year federal sentence and my T700 driver was arrested when he showed up with the insurance adjuster.

No offense, this is a cool story but I don't really see what it has to do with the topic at hand?

He's asking for stories about people who believed they had staunch morals or principles but then someone came in with a wad of cash and then they betrayed those principles.

Shady people exist, we all know that.

"Everyone has a price" is typically used when someone rejects an offer due to some claimed reason.

Most of the replies to this post seem to misunderstand this saying. An otherwise ethical person might initially refuse to do a thing, but give in when the reward gets large enough. The saying basically claims that every person has a price point at which they throw their principles out the window for money. That's the sort of story I was expecting when I clicked this post.

It's just as valid for people with first-hand experience to post stories about when they refused to cave to the increased reward. I think many here would, rightly, not want to share stories about the times when they had compromised their own morals and ethics for money.

>stories about people who believed they had staunch morals or principles but then someone came in with a wad of cash and then they betrayed those principles.

Running a shop to repair something that weighs north of forty tons implies you're a fairly ethical person. Large tanker trucks for example hold a capacity of 11,000 gallons (14.6kl). This can be anything from milk to salsa, or more typically gasoline or Methylene Chloride. Hacking around in the internals of the computer that controls the engine is generally a dangerous idea as trucks use their engines to slow themselves on hills, or control themselves during ascents much more than their brakes.

I guess 'everyone has a price' in my field is the greased palm you take when someone asks you to compromise your ethics. Sure, you made way more on a routine service overhaul than you normally would have, but gojo doesnt make a hand cleaner to wash off what happens when your work is directly attributable to a major accident or fatality.

> Running a shop to repair something that weighs north of forty tons implies you're a fairly ethical person.

Eh. I wouldn't put that into the necessary column.

Not to mention, there's also the chance that these people saw nothing morally wrong with what they did. They see all these safety features and regulations as nothing more that the government "playing nanny" or whatever.

Or maybe the truckers do and some guy decided he can make a good living off of catering to their particular whims. Also whoever did the modification believed that he knew what he was doing.

Ethics are also a very fluid thing. This guy may show up to work on time every day, great boss, great employee, faithful to his wife, great dad to his kids, pays his taxes, volunteers at the soup kitchen, etc., but thinks that as long as no one is directly hurt by his actions, taking money to perform these modifications is a-ok.

> Running a shop to repair something that weighs north of forty tons implies you're a fairly ethical person

Wait, so the weight of the machines someone repairs is somehow directly related to how ethical one it? Would a heavy industrial crane mechanic be even more ethical then? What about someone who works on a boat? A large cargo ship, maybe? And does it work the other way - someone who repairs cars is less ethical? And a wrist-watch repair man would have no ethics at all, I assume?

Agreed, I didn't understand that remark at all.

You're taking that phrase too literally. He's saying that someone in charge of operating or maintaining something as potentially deadly as a semi truck should hold themselves to higher standards of ethics, not that there's some sort of direct correlation between weight and ethics.

Then he shouldn't have used the word 'implies' as a conjunction, he should have said 'ought to mean', or 'should require you to be' instead.

There's no discernible consequence to him not satisfying your hyper-literalism, so why "should" he use your preferred phrasing?

I'd hardly call it hyper-literalism, since he's the one not using the English language properly - that is, he failed to communicate his ideas accurately.

Thanks for posting. When I was back in highschool taking autoshop as an elective, there were always people from diesel mechanic schools coming in, showing videos, and trying to recruit from our class, and I looked into it somewhat and was blown away that the information they were telling us was mostly true and accurate.

How long have you been working on diesel engines? How much have diesel engines changed over your career? What's the worst part of your job? I think the thing that ultimately steered me away from a blue collar career is the perception that I'd be stuck in a system of pay grades and unions and zero ability to climb up the ladder faster through hard work and expertise, rather than just putting in time and waiting for dates on a calendar, was I right about that?

Thanks for sharing.

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