These numbers matter more here. The Cummins/Allison engine/drive-train in these vehicles are otherwise good for 1 million miles before rebuild on average until they are used as delivery trucks. The constant stopping and starting used as delivery trucks cuts that number down to around 480k miles. So they are selling vehicles that will require engine and transmission rebuilds in less than 80k miles. That's very shady. The engine rebuilds are usually around $10k same as a refurbished engine and the transmission rebuild is around $3k. That does not count the cost to install them.
The lawsuit accuses FedEx of replacing the odometers in many of its vans with new ones that read zero miles, using the vans for a bit longer after that
Being born into a 5 digit odometer world and growing up around people who learned every way possible to suss out mileage - this seems nuts to me. How could they think that zero people would suspect and investigate an odometer swap?
Past that, how could so few company mechanics notice a discrepancy between mileage and wear - that no whistleblowers came forward?
How is it even legal? "You can lie but you have to admit to it".
I’m not knowledgeable about odometers at all, but if it’s as easy as “hooking up to a computer” to get the real mileage, why don’t people do that when they buy the trucks?
Sometimes they get stuck.
It isn’t lying if you say “this odometer is 40k low”.
That’s the difference between fraud and not-fraud right? “It’s not illegal to install a new odometer unless you lie about the odometer reading for money” doesn’t seem like a contradiction to me.
It has to be legal to have an incorrect odometer reading otherwise, unless the odometers are easily changed to display arbitrary readings, entire cars are scrapped as soon as they need replacements.
Perhaps this should be possible? If nothing else, it should technically be possible to hook it to a load and run the odometer up to what it should be. You'd have to be careful not to overshoot, since you can't reduce the value on an odometer if they're properly designed.
It'd still be useful to denote "this vehicle has had the odometer replaced, but care was taken to ensure the odometer value is within +/- 1% of the authentic value"
Of course, this is really only for mechanical-style odometers. Digital ones, I know almost nothing about, wouldn't surprise me if there is no "stored mileage" in such an odometer.
And yet another reason to ensure "Right to Repair" Laws are passed and enforced.
Right now, one state, I forgot which, was informed by the auto industry they will ignore the law. I do not know if enforcement has started yet.
>>> FedEx started auctioning old vans off through its fleet company, Holman Fleet Leasing (also a defendant in the lawsuit). The lawsuit alleges that both FedEx and Holman intentionally replaced the odometers to artificially inflate the values of the vans, so they'd sell for higher prices at various auctions throughout the United States. Then, according to the accusations, both companies would split the profits.
>odometers, as automotive components, do occasionally wear out or malfunction and need to be replaced
In many vehicles the mileage is stored in an engine control unit and the odometer is simply a digital display. In others it's stored electronically in the instrument cluster. What if you need to replace a faulty ECU or instrument cluster? There are ways to reflash that data so replacements are accurate.
If you're selling a vehicle at auction, typically it's as-is. So if the ECU or cluster are having problems and can't read out the mileage, it seems unfair to make it illegal to sell.
A disclaimer isn't admitting to lying. It's admitting that the reported value could be inaccurate. That seems to be the most fair requirement in an auction scenario.
I was thinking about running the diagnostics immediately after delivery instead of after two dozen mechanical failures.
But another comment says the diagnostics software is very expensive and difficult to acquire, makes sense if true.
Maybe I'm naive but I think there used to be at least a modicum of self-restraint on this kind of thing. Sure, people always tried to make as much money as possible, but there used to be some limit somewhere - not because you'll get caught but because c'mon, we just don't do that! That seems to have now been totally lost.
https://www.amazon.com/Veepeak-OBDCheck-Bluetooth-Diagnostic...
* Shocks and struts wear out
* Catalytic converters are a semi-wear item
* In winter states that use salt, rust absolutely destroys things. I've had the exhaust system rust through on all of my vehicles (simply happens with age).
* Seat cushions, steering wheel, and other high touch surfaces wear. Likely not an issue _now_, but means a few years down the road, these things will be broken.
* Engine accessories - belts, starters, alternators, pumps, etc. Everything is just a bit closer to it's failure point.
----
Most of these issues aren't particularly expensive on their own, but they add up. Further, your expected maintenance is wildly different.
When were we not there?
I assume for trademark purposes, among other things.
What's the difference between a rebuilt engine and a refurbished engine?
If you judge society by the worst headlines and stories from social media then it’s going to seem very bad
You have to consider that news and social media only talk about the extreme stories. It’s not representative of normal
Society hasn’t so much as changed as we’ve become more aware of all of the issues. And to top it all off, a lot of people want to go back to that again. Because ignorance is bliss.
Elon brought this to tech in an extreme way.
This problem won’t be solved until CEOs and execs are able to take over behind limited liability.
Edit:
Also, in the West society in general is one of abundance with people housed, clothed and educated in school from birth, which IMHO removes a lot of incentives for scams and fraud.
But it used to be (and still is in some countries) that most people were born with nothing in a very tough environment and had to fight just to eat every day. The world of Charles Dickens was real.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_capitalism
Not that I agree with welfare capitalism, I think it’s an unstable position and greed would always kill it. But let’s not forget that for some people, the past was definitely better than the present when it came to some economic matters. Note: I’m not excusing or wanting the bigotry of the past.
[Edit] Adding jaclaz's very good point that one might be able to save money rebuilding their own if it requires less parts.
That said - odometer fraud is a big fucking deal here. A vehicle with unknown mileage is worth far less at auction (just the fact that it's unknown is a huge flag) and if the auctioneer was aware of the fraud (as they're implying Holman Fleet Leasing was) then I'm curious to see how this is resolved... a smaller auction house would likely see jail time for several employees.
People got addicted to ever more shocking news, I guess 9/11 in the west helped with that. Once you burn your receptors and they go back to flatline, the next kick needs to be a bit stronger to keep people engaged, and next one even more so. So just consuming news is a never ending progression of bad, amoral and over time progressively worse stuff.
Personally, I would like that to be countered much more like how they do things in China. Making an example of some bad apples can be very persuasive.
The influx of chinese products has drive the price down to less than $20.
And if you aren't committing fraud and there's a reasonable reason to do this, why not do it just before sale? Why drive another 100k on them afterwards?
It's just so dumb and obvious.
"For my friends everything, for my enemies the law".
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/537889-ol...
One of the ways tampering happens on digital dashes that read the mileage from the ECU is by putting a interceptor in between the dash and the ECU as it’s easier than reprogramming the ECU. https://youtu.be/f4af1OBU5nQ
>>Tom Layton here, the original plaintiff. I will check back often to answer all your questions. First off, you cannot check out auction vehicles with OBD scanners or any other engine scan tool because the auto auctions prohibit any such scanners on auction property. Furthermore., of the 500 or so I purchased 99% were purchased online at auctions all over the country. I had to believe what the auction stated on their condition reports. As far as wondering if FedEx did this on purpose? Both FedEx and Holman were fully aware of this 6 years ago when I filed my lawsuit in 2017. Do you think they stopped? Nope. They continued selling the replaced odometer vans defrauding the buyers right on up to, and including, this year, 2023. I think that answers the question if they did it on purpose! Post any questions about this largest odometer fraud in U.S. history and I will post answers periodically.
Although that's probably a mad theory, if there is hijinks it probably is the good old fashioned kind, probably from this 3rd party middleman rather than FedEx themselves though.
Now, if, for example, you buy a car that is advertised as runs & drives and it turns out the car does not, in fact, drive - you can talk to them and have them buy the car back or whatever. This happens every now and then. But aside from that, you’re SOL.
I’ve purchased a number of cars from them, and one issue that comes up fairly often is that they load the cars via forklift. Often, the forklift will cause damage to the underbody that was not present previously. In cases like that, you’re still pretty much SOL.
When you sell that vehicle only stating "odometer reads 110,000" you are inducing the buyer into error (lying by omission, and you are in bad faith as you have the documents that reveal the real mileage).
For those rare cases where there is no such documentation there is usually the formula "mileage unknown" or similar, but usually it draws the price down to the minimum.
In the late 1980s, Koch Industries stole millions of crude oil each year by instructing their employees to always measure in a way that benefited Koch Industries [1].
[1]: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/22/kochland-...
Citation? Best I could find is that Louisiana regulates floristry but doesn't mandate education (you need to take an exam). As for taking more hours of training than police I think you are conflating that fact in your head with this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cosmetologists-police-trai...
Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with whatever" getting caught scamming people.
I use my $20 eBay OBD2 all the time on my Mk4 Jetta to confirm faults. However, even with such an old car with decent support, there are many things I'm unable to do or see.
Anyone buying used delivery trucks knows they get driven all day every day until it's uneconomical for the owner to continue operating them. Hundreds of thousands of miles. It would be very unusual to see one for sale with under 200k miles, that's "just getting broken in" for trucks like this.
I'm even surprised that these trucks have mechanical odometers. I havent's seen one in a passenger car in many years, they are all digital, rarely fail and (I assume) would be harder to tamper with.
If anything, suspect on a national / global scale there's far more capacity for society to hold people and organizations accountable than any time in history.
"Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders." - Wear Sunscreen
Liquid magnesium chloride is the goto in most states now, and you’ll be happy to know it’s even worse!
I honestly didn't even think about that. Thanks for broadening my vision. I legit was only thinking about the downside of it.
This seems to be the pervasive trend
Just to correct this - auctions operate with a whole lot of caveat emptor
which is why auctions are supposed to be relatively "value buys".. in an auction transaction.. if you're not sure if you're the sucker... then you're the sucker.
https://www.on.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/24582...
Florist, regulated in QC, training is ~1K hours.
https://www.quebec.ca/en/government/quebec-at-a-glance/first...
training is also ~1K hours.
> Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with whatever" getting caught scamming people.
Car sales (any many other things) are heavily regulated where I live. Also it seems regulations are not enforced if one is 'too big to fall'.
Why is this? Just a time restraint thing, or what? I don't understand why an auction wouldn't allow bidders an opportunity to check out the product before they purchase. The pessimist in me would say it's in the auctioneers best interest to give as little information as possible, in order to get the highest bids, but it seems odd that this sounds to be a standard practice.
Shouldn't bidders insist on at least a single 3rd party to say the mileage for the crowd?
"When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society?
That's what I was talking about, and it's much broader than what's covered by welfare capitalism.
> But let’s not forget that for some people, the past was definitely better than the present
We are talking about society as a whole. And "do whatever you think you can get away with" implies that it will be better for some people. Just because life it great doesn't mean people aren't doing whatever they think they can get away with. Just because the past was better doesn't change my assertion.
One can dream, the rich at the top write all the rules. It’s not like Joe Average is the one taking golf trips with Supreme Court justices and buying lobbyists to do their dirty work.
"Allow myself to introduce... myself"
These headlines are showing that the class of "weakest members" has grown to include most of the population.
A representative of "normal" criminals demonatrates they are free to operate with healthy profit margins.
It is normal practice to replace a broken odometer with a new one. That is not fraudulent. However, when that vehicle is sold the seller is legally required to flag the title.
A lot of liability depends on why the odometer was replaced, who transferred the title (does FedEx transfer the title to Holman before sending the vehicle to auction, or does Holman hold the title the entire time?), and whether the title was appropriately flagged as "Not actual mileage".
A refurbished engine is another engine (identical to yours) where all needed to be replaced parts were (still hopefully) replaced.
The difference is that (it really depends on a case by case basis) your engine might need less parts replaced and the replacement is done by your local mechanic (all in all it can cost less in some cases).
With refurbished engines all parts in a given list are replaced, no matter their current condition, and the replacement is done by workers that usually do everyday exactly that.
The cost of a refurbished engine (you give them back yours that they will refurbish for next customer) can be a little less (including transport costs) because the refurbisher has spare parts cheaper due to quantity and personnel is faster (because they do this specific work everyday and have all the proper tooling) but often it is very similar.
Your advantages with a refurbished engine are that it is generally faster than a local rebuild, and usually you are offered some kind of warranty (which may not be the case for a local rebuild).
For a company, it is a way to minimize the stop of the vehicle and to place some responsibilities to the external supplier.
The only difference between that salt and table salt is that there is additional processing to the salt done when destined for table salt to ensure purity and shape. So, yes, they don't literally use table salt, but it is the same raw ingredient.
I agree though that changing the odometer is criminal to do. But one shouldn't be buying cars at auction unless they know what they're doing. Buying a used FedEx van at auction comes with a few known... stipulations.
It is possible FedEx's odometers all came from the same supplier and all had a MTBF of around 300,000 miles - which would explain driving another 100k miles before selling the trucks when they reach 400,000 miles.
Can you provide better citation, or point explicitly to the licensing requirements?
[1] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=license+f...
For example, on a VAG car, most generic diagnostics scanners just report the mileage as it's recorded in non-volatile memory in ECU/odometer/transmission (which people know how to change).
But a specialized scanner (VAG COM, for example) also displays freeze-frame information of diagnostic faults (and this sometimes includes mileage, depending on the module).
If the people doing corrections change the mileage reported by major modules that contain this information but do not bother to erase diagnostic faults, you can sometimes find the real mileage, as recorded by electric seat module which detected undervoltage condition when the battery was removed, or headlight module when the bulb burned out.
> Florist, regulated in QC, training is ~1K hours.
Is it? That page is extremely vague and doesn't seem to be specific to study hours or even education requirements.
Floristry doesn't seem to be on the list of regulated professions in Quebec: https://www.quebec.ca/emploi3/metiers-professions/metiers-re..., but I may have missed it.
<>>36460395 >
From Jalopnik: "FedEx Odometer Fraud" <https://jalopnik.com/fedex-named-in-what-could-be-one-of-the...>
1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit. Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go for clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn't mean this is one of those, but a class action complaint should not just blindly be trusted.
2) There is a strong theme of "of course execs lie cheat steal at every turn" and I also think this narrative should be questioned. Ethics aside, the level of compliance in a public company is insanely high. Execs are already rich. To risk jailtime, which fraud can lead to, you'd need to see something more existential than slightly increasing margins on used van sales.
I felt inclined to comment as I've been on the other end of articles like this, and it is astounding the level of mind reading people have done into my intent and actions on things that were factually just not true at all. I also truly would find it very difficult to commit a broad organizational fraud even if I wanted to and my company is only 500 people.
If I had to make a prediction, the case is less black and white than it appears, and if there was fraud, it was probably committed at a non-executive level by the person whose P&L was directly tied to these resales. Or, it was done independently by the much smaller leasing company where this was more existential to them. It is highly unlikely to be a Fed Ex executive-level conspiracy.
I'm sure there are a few counter examples, such as say the VW emissions scandal, but I would counter these were the exceptions that proved the rule and in general when the C-level was involved was much higher stakes.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons>
Moreover, many states require regular smog checks, at least on passenger vehicles (though I'm not sure what the situation is for commercial vehicles). These entail a comprehensive electronic data record, much of which is automatically captured from the vehicle, and which is available for sale. Auto insurance companies have used these data for years, if not decades, to set policy rates as miles driven is a principle driver (ahem) of risk.
If VINs are avaiable for the vehicles being auctioned, it's possible that a service such as CARFAX might carry such data. I suspect bulk / corporate buyers would tend to have access to such information, whilst small-time operators / individuals likely would not, which throws an additional bias into such auctions.
Yes! Everyone was a millionaire, law was perfect, no intuitions were abusing their powers, no government agencies ran experiments on unsuspecting citizens, everyone was friendly, no one stole anything, no corporation ever lied to the public about dangers of their products, no one was killed, etc! Good old days!
Sarcasm aside, there were things that were better, but also huge amount of things was way worse.
Sorry, I just tire of narratives where when a corporation does something morally wrong, it’s the fault of nebulous capitalist hyper-optimization and no individuals are held accountable.
Diesels need 3 things: fuel, oil, and coolant. Do not ever skimp on those 3.
Liquid sodium chloride is also used in some places.
Neither of those are magnesium chloride and the distinction is important imo.
Sodium chloride attacks exposed metal pretty badly.
Magnesium chloride seems to attack powdercoat, e-coat (electro dipped, all cars parts), and nickle coatings, as well as clear coat wet paint seemingly worse. Which then leaves spots exposed to rust. It seems to hang on to the vehicle and attack the entire winter. I’ve found that areas that switch to mag chloride have worse looking vehicles, so, imo, worse.
It’s also pretty awful for the environment.
I'm tired of the outage-clickbait.
I'm here to learn, not to be emotionally manipulated.
Link in french shows 1K hours https://ecole-metiers-horticulture.cssdm.gouv.qc.ca/programm... to obtain one.
Although a university degree "may be required by some employers ", I find this a bit much, however.
But, upper and middle management don't care about the company as much as the execs. They would much rather show the numbers, earn their comp and fuck off, than worry about long term sustainability of the company or of their reports.
Has anyone really complained about middle management yet?
In this case, though, Fedex has just denied the allegations but not proffered any alternative explanation. Nature abhors a vacuum, and human nature abhors an information vacuum. Corporations habitually refuse to share information unless they are forced to do so legally, so they have only themselves to blame for the subsequent distrust by the public.
I think most high-level executives are competent enough to create legal incentives and disincentives to their organization which typically are legal. The "lie, cheat, and steal" narrative is about functional outcomes and not so much about explicit follow through.
Executives are in positions they can craft goals and to some degree pass responsibility of details of those goals off to others. I can set unrealistic targets that are only attainable by cutting corners and be sure to make it clear I'll drop people who don't meet those targets or reward people who do. I can leave in-depth questioning about the approach (the potentially dirty details) to create a layer of plausible deniability.
It's as if I hire a driver to take me from point A to point B. That distance may be impossible to cover without violating an array of traffic laws. My goal as the passenger though is to traverse the space safely at some price. I don't really care about how it's done, I'll leave that to the driver. I can create pressure on a driver and/or apply selection bias to choosing a driver willing to take on my impossible request. At no point did I say: violate traffic laws, speed, etc. but I know that's what's going to happen to attain my goal. I never incriminate myself by making the goal generalized and as a passenger, I take on no legal risks for my driver violating traffic laws. Suddenly, using a crafted goal, careful selection, and money, I've created a situation for something illegal to happen. Should I be at fault? What if I even added to criteria of transporting me from A to B not to violate traffic laws but I give a wink wink, shove a little more money (incentive) at the problem, or turn the cheek when it occurs so I don't witness it. Am I still not at fault?
A caricature of this behavior in my opinion is Donald Trump who operates completely in the grey areas wherever possible, pushing or promoting questionable behavior but avoiding the provable cases where he's responsible. From my interaction with various executives over the years, this strategy isn't unique. It's certainly not everyone but impossible environments and requests are made on the daily. It happens from the highest levels and gets passed down and down.
The complaint has 4 cited individuals and follows up on an already ongoing lawsuit with a used vehicle dealer that filed a lawsuit in 2017 over being scammed as well.
The complaint class action references 4 affected independent individuals as victims.
But, this entire thing is in parallel with an already ongoing lawsuit by a used vehicle broker that filed a lawsuit in 2017 over being scammed as well.
https://cdllife.com/2021/fedex-battles-lawsuit-over-millions...
This seems incredibly naive. You'd have to be willfully ignorant to think that a) rich people won't break the law to make a tiny bit more money, and b) fraud committed by large corporations often results in jail time.
I agree with you that this article isn't worth very much, but that's only because lawsuits in general shouldn't be trusted without corroborating evidence, not because a rich executive would never do this.
Well that's the magic of the court system, the filing of the lawsuit is to either get them to settle/admit wrongdoing or to force this to discovery.
>I'm even surprised that these trucks have mechanical odometers.
Freightliner vans aren't fancy hi-tech vehicles, they are utility vehicles.
But there's no difference between mechanical and digital odometers here. If you swap a digital cluster, you end up swapping the odometer reading. Architecturally vehicles have seldom moved on from storing the reading in the cluster.
It really becomes a question of where do you store the reading? A engine computer is more likely to be replaced due to an accident than the odometer in the car even though on many vehicles it will still track the mileage.
>they are all digital, rarely fail and (I assume) would be harder to tamper with.
Actually, in most cars they are absolutely tamperable over CAN or physical access. If I remember right, the Honda digital cluster even up to my 2021 just has a standard SPI flash chip that you can tamper with to change the odometer value.
The people in a corporation can and do get sent to jail, even if the corporation itself does not.
Maybe there was no conspiracy involved, and the fleet mechanics were just swapping out defective gauge clusters (somehow always swapping in a lower mileage cluster).
So the best defense they have is that this was an accident of sloppy record keeping leading to a failure to make legally required disclosures… which is not a great defense.
Asbestos in talcum powder. PFAS exposure and dumping into public water supplies. Monsanto and roundup. Cigarettes health effects. Climate change from burning hydrocarbons. Norfolk southern and the controlled burn in east palistine. I could literally go on and on about the history of execs poisoning people and the planet while knowing full well about it. All to keep the profit margin, but you know this stuff you’re just willfully ignoring it.
If you’re an ethical executive, you’re a unicorn.
I think maybe, in the immediate past in the West it was better.
We still lived and worked more locally, standing with neighbours mattered; corporations had less power than governments; governments were less able to manipulate their citizens, perhaps.
Politicians seem to have learnt to give just enough to quell the riots and pervert the system for maximum financial gain for those who control them; spreading losses across all those being exploited. The UK's conservative government stole something like £30B using preferential contracts in just two areas (IT, PPE supply) during the pandemic.
In the recent past it seems highly unlikely that someone sacked twice for lying, Alexander Boris de Pfeffle Johnson, would get a job as an MP, nevermind becoming PM. In the past it would be inconscionable, now the party seems to shrug and say 'he brings in a lot of a Russian campaign money, lets make him PM'.
In the UK there has been a systematic removal of scrutiny and oversight: choosing BBC management, choosing the civil service boss (it was previously always under open competition), changing the nature of parliamentary oversight, and of course Brexit helps considerably to this end.
I've no doubt it was worse in the middle ages, but considerable doubt it was worse throughout the 20th Century.
For a practical experiment… add salt to water. You’ve made a brine. That is all.
When you combine a mercenary mind with oversight from a person who doesn’t believe in “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is” that’s when the bad stuff starts to happen.
There’s also a machismo school of business that lionizes force of will. Telling employees you want something that seems impossible and expecting them to get it. Nevermind that by far the easiest way to cross an impossible finish line is to cheat your ass off.
How many products do we need class action suits on? How many exposes on child or captive labor? How many superfund sites? How many companies going bankrupt ten years later when the truth comes out, before we hold people accountable and call bullshit on the “aw shucks” response to tough questions?
Or maybe a Bachelor of Arts from a business school is not enough rigorous education to run a multinational company.
In this case FedEx outsources the work to a fleet management services company to remove even more liability from themselves.
“No one becomes a billionaire without hurting a lot of people” is still true, though inflation will eventually make us have to change that to “multi-billionaire”.
It's a good thing the ownership class doesn't get away with literally everything because that would drive people to vigilante violence.
It would be easy in a delivery business for an odometer to roll over one or even twice, and if you assign the new kid to get rid of the old trucks he might assume things.
That is not to absolve anyone. The truth can be a liability or an asset, and has to be managed not unlike inventory.
But that’s not what happened here:
> The lawsuit accuses FedEx of replacing the odometers in many of its vans with new ones that read zero miles, using the vans for a bit longer after that, and then selling them at auction with 100,000 miles or less on the new odometers.
That stretches credulity. But also, if you buy a FedEx truck or a police cruiser thinking you got a good deal on a low mileage vehicle, you’re a fucking idiot. Of course they’re going to drive them into the ground before selling them.
The magnesium chloride ice melt (which contains other compounds too) has lower toxicity than sodium chloride. That is particularly important for plants and pets.
Rust inhibitors were things in road salt spreads in the past, but it is found that they can be very harmful to aquatic life ( https://onepetro.org/NACECORR/proceedings-abstract/CORR96/Al... ) so now they're generally not used ( https://www.cga.ct.gov/2014/rpt/2014-R-0001.htm )
> This winter, a Wisconsin county is fighting icy roads with a homegrown product: liquid cheese brine. Tens of thousands of gallons of the stuff are used each year along with road salt, according to officials in Polk County.
Turning to beet juice and beer to address road salt danger - https://apnews.com/article/science-bb34e41bb95a4dfa85301621e...
> CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Looking to strike a balance between ice-free roads and clean waterways, public works departments around the country are working to cut their salt use in winter by slathering the roadways with beet juice, molasses, and even beer waste to make them safer.
The consensus seems to be that after 500,000 miles the Cummins engine will either be dead or need to be rebuilt. 400,000 miles is considered high mileage that few achieve.
So on the surface it seems like you might be right that LinuxBender was wrong. But he did sound quite knowledgeable, didn't he? So I still can't tell one way or another. Ah the beauty of the Internet :).
That sure is what it seems like. C-level solidarity, even managed to blame the peons with just as little evidence as everyone else blaming the execs...
VW is in the business of selling vehicles, and has a real interest there to push the envelope as much as possible.
FedEx is not in the business of selling used vehicles. These vehicle sales likely don't impact their core business in the slightest - making an organization-wide scandal just silly to even think about.
Looking online, these types of "vans" sell for anywhere between $5,000 and $30,000 (with 4 digit miles)[1]. Seriously... FedEx isn't going to blink at any of this.
These class actions are always brought by bottom-feeding lawyers that use serial-plaintiffs. The reality is the class action bit will be retracted, and the lawyers, err, plaintiff will receive a "go the hell away please" payment. That's the game here...
[1] https://www.auctiontime.com/listings/trucks/auction-results/...
Unironically, earn the comp, and fuck off to let the next person up the totem pole deal with the consequences of their decisions.
Shit may roll downhill, but sometimes, nothing changes til the guy at the top gets a swift boot to the ass in the form of a dose of Real Life (TM).
There's a federal law that requires you to either swear that you know the odometer reading is accurate, that the odometer has rolled over, or that the true odometer reading is unknown. This disclosure is made on every vehicle sale, and there's a standard form.
If you can't swear to the first two, you swear to the last one.
I wouldn't assume that a low mileage fleet vehicle is necessarily beat. Maybe it was assigned to a short route (There's a FedEx route on Lopez Island in Washington, half his day is spent on the ferry), maybe it is being phased out early due to a change to electric. There's a lot of reasons FedEx might sell a low mileage vehicle, and if you have a legal document from a major corporation stating that the mileage is accurate, most people would trust that.
It is getting clearer to everyone (from execs to ICs) that the command structure with layers and layers of management gives rise to pathological behaviors in the organization.
Perhaps this round of recession will bring some change to organization structures - ideally with less middle management.
Evil exists. Stop shoving your head in the sand and realize it's an uphill fight.
It is not surprising that FedEx has declined to submit evidence for scrutiny. It’s not time for that yet. They will be required to do so in discovery and they better hope they can at trial but right now we should not expect to hear anything from them other than “admit, deny, insufficient basis to form a belief and therefore deny.”
It’s just too early for an evidence based discussion. This is the nature of the civil action.
> This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit. Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go for clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn't mean this is one of those, but a class action complaint should not just blindly be trusted.
This amounts to "class action lawyers and journalists are bad so we can ignore what they're saying".
The only exemption is for vehicles older than 10 years. In that case you don’t need to make a declaration, but you still can.
I personally see nothing naive in the parent post. It brings arguments based on knowledge how organization works and appeals to a game theory (stakes do not match). I'm not saying the reasoning is necessarily valid, but it is not naive.
The only part of the parent comment I do not approve from a methodology standpoint is an appeal to "exception that proves the rule". Exceptions do not prove rules, they disprove them.
in worlds where existence is related to health care which costs money which is related to margins, tampering with margins can be existential
Even the specific van/truck model Freightliner MT45 seemingly can mount different models of Cummins engines.
Unless you find data for the specific model of engine and truck it is difficult to get valid numbers.
Generally speaking, for heavy trucks and large engines, the 600,000 km (or 400,000 miles) is the mileage where an overhaul (not a whole rebuild) is needed.
In a professional use, unless it is used in shifts, a truck will probably make 40,000 miles per year, so it should happen around 10 years age.
The most common engine on the Freightliner MT45 seems to be the Cummins 6.7, which should be a little more resistant than the older 5.9, both can do 500,000 miles and more, in the "right hands" and with "proper maintenance".
I doubt that used in a fleet (possibly "proper maintenance", but likely a lot of "wrong hands") it can reach 400,000 miles or more, and it makes sense for a fleet manager to sell at an auction the vehicles that are expected to need a large overhaul or a rebuild soon, in the article they talk about the fleet renovation happening around 350,000 miles.
However, they were caught fiddling the mileage again on the 'reimbursed' cars (not upping it enough). They were caught for the second time because the catalytic converter had a chip that counted every 250 miles or something along those lines.
Before many things were kept secret or could at least be kept out of the press. Now everything is photographed and filmed, and politicians have the bad habit of using messaging apps instead of making quiet phone calls or simply of having a private chat and so they leave plenty of incriminating evidence in writing.
As I understand it (sorry, I don't have a citation handy) was that VW was gaming the tests, but in order to make their vehicles' operations MORE efficient. That is, the tests are dumb because they concentrate on start-up emissions with less attention to warm running. VW wanted to also optimize the warm running, but to do that they had to game the software to still appear to optimize only for the cold start.
That is, aside from the ethical problem of cheating the regulation (a big aside to be sure), they were acting more responsibly than most.
00s just became mob rule via social mechanisms and manipulation; cliquish behavior is not something you can shoot or detonate, so we're stuck with people taking out their frustrations on children at school and anybody unsuspecting. The dejected are only going after targets they can reach (a tragic, but logical outcome).
There was one aspiring vigilante in the last few years who drove across the country to assassinate some scummy judge or something and was immediately caught while doing recon. His mistake was going after someone afforded protection. Everything is political and treated as terrorism. It's too risky to vote from the rooftops these days; there are an increasingly-infinite number of ways to fail.
I once helped fix up a manufacturing co that materially overstated net income by >10% for a decade. And it was just a mix of honest mistakes, miscommunications, some incompetence, and a shockingly small amount of fraud (though not 0).
I learned it's really easy for sr execs to run the company badly, one or two junior execs to push the limits, and a everyone else to just be a biiiit lazy - and bam, there's a big fraud.
That said 0 stock is up 5% w/w, so this can't be THAT big
FYI I do not reset odometers, I am on the other side, developing software for instrument clusters.
The current round of recession will probably temporarily shrink some companies or cut off some lines of business, thereby flattening the hierarchy in a less harmful way than what I described. But overworking managers is a different bad thing.
Maybe you're advocating for a smaller maximum company size overall, so that a relatively flat hierarchy doesn't overwhelm those managers who do remain? Or for some right of participation by non-executive managers in collective worker action, as exists in Germany and as acted in the original version of the US National Labor Relations Act before the Taft-Hartley amendments, so that some kinds of large-company pathologies can be addressed better?
All of us here work at jobs, possibly in very large corporates. Do we see anything illegal going on? I would reckon that >90% of us have gone through our corporate life without ever being a part of anything close to even illegal, at worst we forward something to legal to be extra sure. So if we think corporations are regularly behaving illegally, we all have simultaneously seemed to have lucked out to be in the one the one ethical and legally compliant organization.
If some part of your worldview is that the world is being filled with greedy, selfish and unethical people, constantly trying to screw over others but you are the exception most likely your worldview is completely off (Most people view themselves as the good guy/ hero of their world). In my experience it is very unlikely for anyone in C Suite to ever risk any actual fraud in their dealings (or anyone in the organization really), however lawyers are essentially parasites on society who feed on productive work to make a living while gaslighting rest of society into believing that they’re playing an important role in protecting it.
If that's the case, then any possible scandal here would be squarely on the company selling the vehicles - not FedEx.
FedEx might just be a tacked-on name. You see that quite often with Prop 65 cases. The plaintiff attorneys add anyone even remotely related to the case, just to drive up pressure and chaos, hoping for quicker/larger settlement offers.
In this situation, even if FedEx has nothing to do with vehicles sales, they might opt to settle and write a check just to make the bad publicity go away. If you think that sounds like a shakedown, you'd be right.
VW's cheating is in essence the cars have two modes to run the engine; compliance mode and performance mode, and they run in compliance mode when the car starts up until the steering wheel is turned (more or less).
In compliance mode, the engine control follows the rules to meet the emissions test standards. In performance mode, operating temperature is allowed to increase, which increases performance, increases fuel efficiency, idles better, etc, but increased operating temperature leads to more NOx emissions.
Additional, for models with diesel emissions fluid, performance mode injected much less DEF than compliance mode; DEF reduces operating temperature as well as directly reacting withe NOx. This reduced use of DEF allowed a smaller DEF tank to be used; regulations require passenger car DEF tanks to have enough capacity for normal use within the regular service interval; if the vehicle was operating in compliance mode the whole time, you'd need to fill the DEF tank between oil changes (or have a larger tank, which needs to fit somewhere).
In the end, the big tradeoff is fuel efficiency (and therefore CO2 emissions) vs NOx emissions; which is a fine tradeoff to consider, but you can't give drivers what they want and regulators what they want without cheating.
OP was claiming the latter is rare. You're saying the former is common. They're not the same thing though.
This is the way this system is setup. Executives pursue profit at the expense of everything else. This is the cornerstone of capitalism.
This is so irresponsible of you to just assert without evidence, and is so out of context to portray VW as the good guys here. They did not break the rules and flaunt regulations to make their system more efficient. They did so to cover up their failure to deliver on a new generation of "clean diesel" tech. VW thought they could do it, they invested billions in it, and they couldn't figure out how to do it without emitting way too many other pollutants. So they built their cars to lie to regulators.
The tests cover an extensive range of use cases, mostly warm running. There were two modes, one that was more fuel efficient but emitted NOx above regulations, and one that was less fuel efficient but was within NOx regulations. They detected when the tires were on suspension that simulates real-world driving for testing. They got caught by academics who wanted to test real-world vs simulated suspension.
Here is actual source, Bloomberg, which isn't some kind of environmentalist or anti-business publication: (https://web.archive.org/web/20160312181801/https://www.bloom...):
"The road tests captured a variety of conditions: high elevations up Mt. Baldy; stop-and-go urban errand-running in San Diego; freeway driving around Los Angeles. The two Volkswagens’ emissions exceeded standards by 5 to 35 times. The BMW’s didn’t. [...] The Lean NOx Trap is a system of concessions. To get cleaner exhaust, you’d need to use a squirt of fuel every few seconds to burn up nitrogen oxide. Or, in the other direction, to get better fuel efficiency, you’d need to spew out dirtier exhaust. Managing this trade-off requires a complex calibration of the onboard computer, the engine control unit, so it can adjust constantly to variables like temperature and speed and optimize both emissions and fuel usage. The trouble was, Volkswagen hadn’t been able to get its new engines to comply with the stringent U.S. standards."
The reason is they had invested in a "clean diesel" engine tech that was supposed to be their market differentiator. VW invested billions into it. Yes, it was more fuel efficient, but it was supposed to also stay within existing pollution emissions regulations. Nobody else made such big investments in clean diesel because they couldn't figure out how to make it more efficient without also emitting pollutants at much higher levels. But everybody was so bought into it that they felt they had to cover it up.
I almost never see this phrase used correctly however.
Agree, but not everyone here can afford <5 year old vehicle, so people have to do with the means they have. As soon as warranty/lease ends, people generally go with cheaper, non-manufacturer maintenance shops.
Before the shift there was an influx of tiny cars with tiny diesel engines which had emissions <= 99grams CO2 / km.
Now it's NOx all around. In fact, The Netherlands has limited daytime speeds on highways to 100km/h vs 120/130km/h just for this purpose.
Maybe I have a naive view of the law, but when you read a report that says your chemicals are poisoning people, and you choose to dump it in public waterways, you’re guilty of a crime personally.
"Street parking is always allowed"
"Not always! Three years ago there was a marathon that went through this street and you weren't allowed to park here that morning."
This exception is so specific and obscure that it "proves" (in a casual conversational sense) that "you can always park here" is a good rule. Not all exceptions prove the rule: if the exception is "except on weekends and holidays and overnight", that's so significant and obvious that it actually disproves the rule.
Interesting that the top comment on this thread now is cautioning skepticism on the claims.
-Legit cases that describe (or at least ultimately lead to finding) clear and meaningful wrongdoing. There's always some room for arguing one way or the other but ultimately there's some clarity that something meaningfully wrong happened. I think these are probably ~3-5 percent of cases filed. These cases tend to settle relatively early for high dollar figures.
-Cases of clear but unimportant wrongdoing. Technically a statute was violated, but no one was really hurt at all. These tend to settle for small $ figures. Perhaps 20% of cases.
-Important but unclear wrongdoing (evidence supports either finding; among one million documents, some look really bad, while others look very exculpatory). These stick around for a long time and ultimately earn lawyers a lot but cost the parties, on average, a lot of money to litigate. Perhaps 30% of cases.
-Complete/fabricated nonsense and/or fishing expeditions. Cost defendants a fair amount (and brutal for small defendants), but not the end of the world for big defendants. Perhaps 50% of cases.
I do doubt FedEx would be in any way involved in the details of selling leased vehicles. I can say with a high degree of confidence there never was a meeting with FedEx execs where they pitched the idea of increasing residuals by swapping odometers...
> I, ______________________ (SELLER’S NAME, PRINT) state that the odometer now reads ______________________ miles (NO TENTHS) and to the best of my knowledge that it reflects the actual mileage of the vehicle described below, unless one of the following statements is checked.
The seller is only strongly asserting what the odometer reads. If the seller doesn't know anything about that vehicle, then "to the best of [their] knowledge", that reflects the actual mileage.
Also to clarify, none of this is sworn, or "under penalty of perjury"
Do you think the rules that apply to patent litigators and class action litigators are different than the rules that apply to other litigators? I really don't understand what you seem to think is going on here, it's a bit naive imo (all the lawyers that I don't like are the bad ones and they lie!)
and I didn't even make it to your next part of your post, where you think that business executives are the honest ones! They aren't. They don't have their own personal license and livelihoods at risk most of the time, unlike attorneys.
I went to law school and am married to someone who works in litigation at a top 10 law firm, I understand very well how the legal process works both technically and in economic/strategic terms.
This is, as I recall, literally the origin of the term?
This line of argument only works if the majority of a company is exposed to illegal behavior.
If a large company can commit (or attempt to commit) illegal behavior, while making that behavior only visible to a small fraction of people, then this argument falls apart.
For example, how many people were involved and aware of the VW emissions scandal? 200? 400? Out if 200,000 worldwide employees. So >99% of VW employees would have likely reported not having observed illegal behavior. That does not mean that those employees “lucked out” into working for an ethical legally-compliant company. It means the company is smart enough to hide its unethical and disreputable behavior from its employees as much as possible.
If you don't learn history, and then lso not pay attention to what's happening around you, of course you will pine for the good old days when it was easier to control the narrative.
There are only a few jobs which have mandatory qualifications (left column in the link below) and a larger number of jobs which have voluntary qualification courses. There may be secondary requirements (e.g., to work as a butcher and get insurance, your employees must have the voluntary qualification certificate), but these are not regulated professions the way you have been incorrectly claiming on this thread.
https://www.emploiquebec.gouv.qc.ca/citoyens/developper-et-f...
Women and minorities get targeted by this sort of stuff all the time.
Though, yes, reality tends to be messier than economist's idealised models.
Same salt, different VAT rate depending on use.
It would've taken just one case of a mismatch between the digital and physical odometer without it being mentioned for a huge stink to be thrown up. And it'd also be the auction house's name on the block, because they should check these things themselves. If this is as widespread as they claim it to be, then even the occasional spot checks would show it.
Reporting can literally be done by an "administrative assistant". You could have an administrative assistant for 50 ICs and it won't make a difference. There is no need for layers.
Career management only exists because there are so many layers in the ladder. If there were only 2 levels, and then VP, there would be no need for career management. There is no need for layers for the actual work to get done.
Performance management is another load of crap because it is something that should only be required for determination of rewards or to completely fire people. But this job doesn't need layers and layers of management.
If you want to see the structure top down, the CEO should have VPs who allocate money to teams. The teams should have pieces of ownership that they are supposed to run and maintain. A team lead/captain can run the team.
But that's it. What is the need for kingdoms of apes that don't really do much except pushing work downwards?
But ive had numerous 90s+ low trim consumer vehicles breaking 300k miles easily and I know some semi-trucks do have 1 million+ miles on the original motor because of such features. And so while I don't have much experience with commercial delivery vehicles, I don't see any big problems with saying they could go a million miles themselves, although due to the nature of delivery driving and driver turnover I would also expect 400-500K miles to be when a rebuilt should be considered unless it was all done by one driver who doesn't drive like mad and they had skilled mechanics maintaining them. And if they didn't care about ruining the engine at some point I would expect 6-700K atleast if it was a well built commercial engine with commercial features.
It was commonly mis-used to mean “eh that just a minor exception that you should ignore.” But it’s been mis-used so much that now it has both meaning.
A project to cut an ongoing vendors costs is about the only way for a large cap procurement specialist to meet and exceed targets with no possibility of additional valid free market bids. That opens them right up to questions of liability, with managers knowing or avoiding knowledge, workarounds, special advice to other divisions, etc.
You don't have to go to jail to lose a lawsuit.. I worked for a company that put together a whole system for reporting these kinds of ethics irregularities in the companies favor. I don't think that was a charity, they act as a defense or at least lower punitive damages a judge is likely to award when violations still occur.
Underlying U.S. and EU emission standards
The Volkswagen and Audi cars identified as violators had been certified to meet either the US EPA Tier 2 / Bin 5 emissions standard or the California LEV-II ULEV standard. Either standard requires that nitrogen oxide emissions not exceed 0.043 grams per kilometre (0.07 g/mi) for engines at full useful life which is defined as either 190,000 kilometres (120,000 mi) or 240,000 kilometres (150,000 mi) depending on the vehicle and optional certification choices.
This standard for nitrogen oxide emissions is among the most stringent in the world. For comparison, the contemporary European standards known as Euro 5 (2008 "EU5 compliant", 2009[5]–2014 models) and Euro 6 (2015 models) only limit nitrogen oxide emissions to 0.18 grams per kilometre (0.29 g/mi) and 0.08 grams per kilometre (0.13 g/mi) respectively. Defeat devices are forbidden in the EU. The use of a defeat device is subject to a penalty.
While the some book keepers will care, in its grand scheme of operations that amount is negligible to the point where it may cost them more in man power than what they recoup from doing so.
It is illegal not to report the odometer misreading in a sale. The real question is, who make the odometer change and where did the intentional or not breakdown happen on failure to report the odometer inaccuracy.
Thou shalt not kill, except all the times thou shalt.
But a private vehicle fleet may use private mechanics, who probably do not report information like that (there's no financial incentive to do so, and there's probably no mechanism to make it easy).
I might be able to tell that this Dodge Dart has had the frame straightened twice and the engine doesn't match the VIN number. But a private fleet vehicle is probably a black box.
There are tens of thousands of companies in the US. The vast majority of them aren’t run by horrible people.
My memory is this came from Cicero and was about a place excluding women by rule, as they pointed to the exception of a woman that was allowed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule seems to support both interpretations, and at least shows I got the speaker right. Not seeing that my specifics are good, though. I would not be shocked to know that I am wrong there.
Say the lawsuit is originally against just Holman Fleet Leasing and FedEx is the one legally liable (Maybe FedEx is the one that is doing something naughty. Maybe there's some contractual language around Fedex assuming all legal liabilities for the vehicles sold.). You're going to spend a bunch of time in court arguing with Holman about if they're even the right party to sue, and your case is either going to get thrown out or you're going to lose. Meanwhile, the statute of limitations is still ticking, so if it takes a long enough time to adjudicate the case against Holman, you won't even be able to refile the same case with the correct respondent. Oops. but if the statute of limitations miraculously hasn't run out yet, that's not even considering the possibility that the kind of person who would roll back an odometer would also have a punishingly short document retention policy, so all the documents that still existed at the time you filed against Holman have long since been shredded and destroyed, so your discovery in the new case against Fedex is going to be a single email saying "yeah, we don't have anything going back that far. Oops again.
Now consider the lawsuit filed initially against both Holman and Fedex. Assuming your list of respondents is complete, the case isn't going to get thrown out because you sued the wrong person. Liability will still be adjudicated (and the case amended to drop respondents as the proper liability holder gets determined), but now you don't need to worry about the statute of limitations running out as you wait for the determination of liability against the first respondent. And the document retention clock starts with that lawsuit and covers the time where you're just determining who hold liability, so now they can't delete those documents even if they other wise would be. Both of them are now going to be legally required to retain all the stuff you list in discovery for the duration of at least their involvement in the case. Sure, they could destroy those records anyway, but that sort of thing is regularly used to infer guilt of the respondent with the worst possible inferences when it's destroyed in violation of discovery.
This narrative is "middle-middle management lies, cheats, and steals at every turn and sometimes on other people's turns too".
And while we might question that narrative about execs, we know that it is unfailingly true of middle management. It's not unexpected, that's what happens when perverse incentive is piled on top of perverse incentive. Someone was racing for a bonus. And discovery's going to show that there was some absurd uptick in how many OEM odometers for this model were ordered in the problem years, far in excess of anything that had happened previously.
I've learned over time, it doesn't matter how righteous your defense is - all that matters is the money it'll cost to make the issue go away. Turns out, it's almost always cheaper to write a check than defend yourself.
seems the former, so you can see why the public is unimpressed
an identical but unincorporated organization would not be
Corporate America unfortunately does not worry about jail time. Instead fines are primarily paid from shareholder cash.
I wish jailtime was an impediment. It's not
A company the size of FedEx has accountants and actuaries watching leases of this scale like hawks. It's simply not believable that Fedex never "noticed." And if they noticed they were getting much better than normal resale values but didn't ask why, that's very much the definition of complicity.
1 BMW N57 Diesel engines like to catch fire if idled for a long time and then flogged (Oil/EGR coolant leak) https://jalopnik.com/bmws-are-bursting-into-flames-so-they-d... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11637379/Widow-PC-k...
2 Police are exempt from MOD so their cars dont have documented service/odometer history.
3 Tons of dealers bought decommissioned Police BMWs and rolled odometers.
The Clocked Up Holy Engine Scandal of the UK Police BMW Fleet by Geoff Buys Cars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEryJeBcg-8
No more BMW Police Cars in the UK... thanks to N57 Engine Fires by Geoff Buys Cars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gJFDdnMXKg
Shoveling around money and work is only a small piece of the job.
A good line manager does things like help resolve interpersonal and inter-team issues, helps address the issues causing underperforming team members to underperform so that they can improve instead of be fired, handles firings and layoffs when necessary but only as a last resort, makes sure team member career goals and skills get considered as opportunities arise, shares concerns and updates both up and down the chain, advocates upwards for necessary staffing and worthwhile raises, oversees hiring for the team in collaboration with the recruiter and tech lead, explains downward for applicable constraints and works with the tech lead how to apply them to the tasks at hand, and so on.
These have all been my goals in my line manager jobs. Notice I said nothing about technical matters or project management or driving execution. That’s tech lead stuff, with some oversight from the manager to make sure business needs are met.
People need management just like computers systems do, but the skill set is totally separate. Computers always do what they’re told, even if software bugs sometimes mean you didn’t tell them you think you told them. People have feelings and needs. Very different.
For a team of more than a few members, management is a full-time nontechnical job. For a 2-4 member team, yeah it can be split.
A good middle manager does the same kind of thing as I said a good line manager does, but managing managers and their teams/orgs instead of individuals.
A bad middle manager does what you think a manager does, and/or several other failure modes.
NaCl is falling out of favor though. I didn’t say it was never used.
If you are a representative of a company that has written records indicating that an odometer was replaced (there is no possible way that fedex doesn’t keep maintenance records), I would argue that “the best of your knowledge” means accessing all those records and ascertaining that the odometer reading is true.
It’s not penalty of perjury, it’s penalty of federal law. Lying there is breaking a federal law specifically written to prevent this sort of odometer fraud.
It certainly could be that despite the appearances being better in say, 1950-2000, that actual corruption was equal or worse, and most of it went undetected and unpunished!
But my take is that it wasn't as bad, because shame used to exist. A politician would "resign in disgrace" when caught in a medium-to-large scandal (even one that seemed technically irrelevant to their responsibilities, like 'sex scandals'). And he would stay out of public life thereafter, out of shame, knowing he couldn't run for office again and win because of their shameful past. Compare Richard Nixon vs. Bill Clinton.
That's what changed. Now it doesn't matter how shameful and corrupt your conduct was, you just either deny or answer with whataboutism towards the other party's worst sins, and carry on, and for some reason voters are consistently fine with this!
Better stated, I think, as who knew the odometers were changed out to zero reads, before the vehicles were then driven another ~200k miles.
Trying to craft a scenario where no one at FedEx had any knowledge at all that their well used vehicles suddenly had zero miles seems like low-return effort.
For an even better question, why undertake that specific project (at scale) except to perpetrate fraud?