That 2025 list is pure BS. I'm glad to see NVIDIA on it because I own some shares but that's just because of a Morningstar "Buy" recommendation on my bank's website. I remember KKR from the 80s as an LBO specialist. "Most trusted?"
Who's NOT on the list? Craftsman, Lowe's, Toyota, Walmart, UnderArmor, Skechers, Ralph Lauren. Like I said, that list is pure BS. Payola probably.
I'm disappointed you're not still in the business world Steve, though i'm guessing you're fine with that and obviously your current work would not be possible. You really do seem to have a good sense for these things.
No idea. I don't recall seeing their step vans driving around for at least the past 15 years and I haven't been a clueless kid earning money over the holidays for "b**** work" on a job site in 30+ years. My impression from acquaintances in the trades is they like buying Craftsman or Milwaukee tools at Lowe's. Or at garage sales.
I am a Snap-On Tools aficionado, but I prefer the tools with the older 50s through 70s logo. The modern look may not have affected quality but they seem to have lost something essential to the brand.
No. I bought a ratcheting screwdriver from a Snap-On truck last year. It has a variety of magnetized bits. The first time I used it, the small Phillips head bit shattered. I was removing the battery cover from a motorcycle; something I’d done dozens of times before without issue. The screwdriver was 85.00.
Let's take the revealed preference point of view. Based on American's behavior, what are the companies they trust the most? I'd say they are the big life insurance companies and financial custodians such as Vanguard, Schwab, and Fidelity.
I came here to say this. The most trusted lists above are probably more about would you buy their product without doing a bunch of research and comparison shopping first. If Steve is looking for a company that treasures its rep for ethics and fair dealing with its customers you want Vanguard or State Farm.
Problem is, it only takes a few ambitious MBA hires to completely change the character of a company and when things turn down, looting ones own rep is a common strategy.
State Farm is a mutual organization. That maybe gives you a good chance in the long run. Another possibility is ...strong regulation.
Schwab is pretty good; they took over USAA's investment management business (which I had been part of), so now USAA can focus solely on the insurance business.
Not in my view. I was familiar with the accident, but the wiki article is pretty good. American had rejected McDonnell-Douglas’ procedure for engine removal during inspections to save time. They developed a procedure in-house using a… forklift. This resulted in damage to the structure which eventually failed.
Steve was incorrect in stating that aileron control cables were a factor in the crash.
Hydraulic lines were severed when the engine separated from the wing. As a result of loss of hydraulic pressure, the left wing leading-edge slats slammed shut. At the high angle of attack in the take off regime, this caused the left wing to stall and the plane to roll left and descend into the ground. Had it happened at altitude, it could very well have been survivable.
The responsible American Airlines crew chief killed himself the night before he was to be deposed by McDonnell-Douglas.
Later in 1979, some test pilots were doing Dutch rolls in a 707. They overdid the recovery and snapped three of the four engines along with their pylons off the wings. They belly-landed it in a field in Snohomish, WA.
That particular F-104 was a special high-altitude research vehicle. It had reaction thrusters for use at altitudes where aerodynamic control forces were ineffective.
There’s a cardiac surgeon in the Philadelphia area whose father was an Italian Air Force general who flew F-104s. He’s a complete airplane nut. Hopefully he doesn’t end up buying a Bonanza.
As a Navy Junior, I've had my own USAA auto & life insurance and other products since '81, and if they're the best, other insurance companies must be awful. Took 6 weeks for an auto claim. No idea why I've stuck with them.
It was RJR Nabisco-- now back to R J Reynolds Tobacco. My mother had a small amount of stock because her mother's half-cousin had married a minor Reynolds, and on bad advice, Dad sold it three years before the buyout ballooned its value. Two decades later, I discovered her foundation bankrolled the non-profit that then rented half my dad's small office building, so we got some of it back.
I just got out of everything USAA. 57 years with the company and they had forgotten everything they were about. Seems to be the American way anymore. I can’t even trust my plumber to do a good job. I think I’ll take a pass on AI and own my incompetent self or incontinent self as it were.
The auto claim was in '98. They messed up other things more recently, and my bundled homeowner's is now higher than my property tax. I'm ready to ditch Wells Fargo (they bought the wreckage that First Union made of once-mighty Wachovia after 2001). So far, it has taken 3 visits and 2 calls to CA to rollover a CD IRA into a brokerage one.
My main concern was the bank. A mess. I stopped driving regularly and switched to another company. It was a good first 50 years but for me the service went down as the membership increased and the marketing became the chief focus.
I was under the impression it was the prices. A couple decades ago an insurance salesman told me when he found out someone was with USAA he didn't even bother.
Their CEO has not been a retired officer since 2020, and the new one's first name is Juan, formerly of the DEA and Off of SECDEF, and with a degree in journalism. What's not to love?
This is a post that makes me miss the Unz site because there are so many potential paths the discussion could go.
I have a fondness for the F-104 because it was the first model airplane I built, a gift from my grandfather aged neighbor who was an amateur pilot and whose oldest son was an F-14 and then F-18 pilot in the Navy. He also bought me an A-4 model, which is more true to his family’s service branch, but I built the F-104 first because it looked so space age. Great memories I hadn’t thought of in years.
Any any rate the ChatGPT list looks pretty solid. The WSJ has had some interesting articles and videos lately on their new CEO and Kirkland brand. It’s mildly annoying that they still openly praise DEI, but it does seem to be a company with a conscience that prizes its relationship with its customers. Kirkland AI would be a winner and remain free of the PE vultures.
> This is a post that makes me miss the Unz site because there are so many potential paths the discussion could go.
Agree.
One of those tangents: I was curious how closely ChatGPT 4o might match Steve's highly opinionated assessment of the F-104.
**Me**: Compare the F-104 Starfighter to other contemporary first-generation jet-powered warplanes with similar mission profiles. Briefly contrast the overall design philosophies. Discuss these planes' track records with respect to fulfilling their missions, reliability, safety (including crashes and fatalities), and length of time they remained in service.
**ChatGPT**: The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, developed in the mid-1950s, was one of several post-WWII, early jet-powered interceptors and fighter-bombers designed for high-speed performance during the Cold War. To understand its place in history, we can compare it to several contemporaries with similar mission profiles: the MiG-21, Dassault Mirage III, and English Electric Lightning. These were all first- or early second-generation supersonic jet fighters intended primarily for interception, though some evolved into multi-role aircraft.
Design Philosophies [table snipped to avoid tl;dr]
Mission Effectiveness [table snipped]
Safety, Reliability, and Fatality Records
F-104 -- Notorious for high crash rate—especially in German service, where over 900 aircraft were delivered and around 300 crashed, killing ~116 pilots. Called "Widowmaker" and "Flying Coffin." Some design flaws (e.g., poor low-speed handling) and training/maintenance issues contributed.
[remainder of table snipped]
Service Longevity [table snipped]
Summary [table snipped]
Conclusion:
The F-104 Starfighter was a technological leap in raw speed and altitude performance but suffered from poor handling, limited versatility, and an infamously poor safety record—especially among NATO allies. In contrast, the MiG-21 and Mirage III represented more balanced approaches, combining speed with agility and cost-effectiveness, which made them globally successful. The Lightning, while extraordinary in some performance metrics, remained a specialized solution with narrow utility.
Ultimately, the F-104 stands as a bold but flawed experiment in aerospace design—a “missile with a man in it”—whereas its peers achieved broader and more enduring operational success.
- - - - - end ChatGPT - - - - -
So on this subject, Steve and ChatGPT are in general agreement.
I wonder how much of the German experience with the F-104 was caused by crappy Northern European weather? Flying an F-104 around under a low cloud deck had to be gripping. If you ran into trouble, you couldn’t just roll level and climb to an altitude where you could work things out. I would take Italian sunny skies any day in that scenario.
I’ll differ with you here. I liked the Unz comment section software, but I think the comments here are of a much higher quality. The petty personal stuff over there drove me away for the last few years. If I never see another grown man use the word “fanboy”, I’ll die happy.
There was definitely a lot to wade through and obviously some childish sniping, but a number of commenters I enjoyed didn’t come over to Substack. Hopefully the commenter base here grows a bit more.
Pretty trivial to run your own AI. Download your favourite studio of choice (LMStudio in my case), get your favourite model from Hugging Face (for you, I recommend Megabeam Mistral 7B because of the ability to handle longer documents such as substack posts) and run it. You’ll need an actual desktop computer with an Nvidia graphics card (get a 4090 RTX).
For users who want to get help with non-document type knowledge tasks, Mistral 8x22B Instruct v01 is a more flexible Mixture of Experts model.
In any event, if you have more questions about AI, feel free to reach out. It’s not rocket science; they’re just neural nets. If you’d like to finetune one for a different ideological or ethical take, this is also possible.
McDonnell-Douglas was bought by Boeing in the mid-90s so it is part of history. But it is a history of greed and carelessness. When they came up with the DC-10 in 1970, they made the cargo door one that opened outwards so they could fit more luggage and the other cargo. It failed one pressure test but McDonnell-Douglas was competing with Boeing's 747 so the pressure test failure was ignored. All so well until June 12, 1972. The cargo door blew off just after takeoff and took with it some of the rear floor of the plane. Some of the hydraulic wires were ripped apart from the door blowing open. Fortunately, some hydraulic lines weren't ruptured and a very skilled pilot named Bryce McCormick was able to land the plane back at Detroit. But it wasn't a happy ending two years later on March 3, 1974 when a cargo door blew open on Turkish Airlines Flight 981. All the hydraulics were ripped apart and the pilots were helpless. The plane crashed outside Paris, killing 346 people. All blood on the hands of McDonnell-Douglas.
By the way, I just watched the McDonnell-Douglas Paris crash on some show called Mayday which re-enacts and explains various air crashes. It is very informative,
I drive a Ford-150 and it's a fine truck. Every Toyota I've driven has been excellent except one, a 2005 Toyota Tundra. I later learned that in the early 2000s, Toyota Tundras did not do a good job coating their chassis so they rusted easily. I drove the Tundra for three years when my local auto mechanic showed me the severe rust on the chassis. Otherwise, I've been very happy with Toyota. I had a Highlander last 392,000 miles.
I was burned by one of the intermediate John Deere mowers. The transmission went after two years and it wasn't worth fixing. I later learned that most small and intermediate John Deere mowers are crap.
One company I rather liked when I ran a business was Uline which sells shipping supplies. It was always reliable, an important quality in the business world. If I asked Uline for something before 5PM, it would arrive the next day.
Lockheed Martin seems to be a well-run company these days. I bought some of its precursor Martin Marietta the day after the '87 crash, put it on dividend reinvestment for several decades, and now my annual dividends are 30% higher than my original investment. Wish my other picks had done half as well.
That 2025 list is pure BS. I'm glad to see NVIDIA on it because I own some shares but that's just because of a Morningstar "Buy" recommendation on my bank's website. I remember KKR from the 80s as an LBO specialist. "Most trusted?"
Who's NOT on the list? Craftsman, Lowe's, Toyota, Walmart, UnderArmor, Skechers, Ralph Lauren. Like I said, that list is pure BS. Payola probably.
I'm disappointed you're not still in the business world Steve, though i'm guessing you're fine with that and obviously your current work would not be possible. You really do seem to have a good sense for these things.
Is Snap-On Tools still as good as it was?
No idea. I don't recall seeing their step vans driving around for at least the past 15 years and I haven't been a clueless kid earning money over the holidays for "b**** work" on a job site in 30+ years. My impression from acquaintances in the trades is they like buying Craftsman or Milwaukee tools at Lowe's. Or at garage sales.
Garage sales are your best bet.
I am a Snap-On Tools aficionado, but I prefer the tools with the older 50s through 70s logo. The modern look may not have affected quality but they seem to have lost something essential to the brand.
No. I bought a ratcheting screwdriver from a Snap-On truck last year. It has a variety of magnetized bits. The first time I used it, the small Phillips head bit shattered. I was removing the battery cover from a motorcycle; something I’d done dozens of times before without issue. The screwdriver was 85.00.
Pretty disappointing.
Let's take the revealed preference point of view. Based on American's behavior, what are the companies they trust the most? I'd say they are the big life insurance companies and financial custodians such as Vanguard, Schwab, and Fidelity.
Ken
Vanguard seems more trustworthy than most. They don't try to sell you very hard, they just know they have the lowest fees possible.
I came here to say this. The most trusted lists above are probably more about would you buy their product without doing a bunch of research and comparison shopping first. If Steve is looking for a company that treasures its rep for ethics and fair dealing with its customers you want Vanguard or State Farm.
Problem is, it only takes a few ambitious MBA hires to completely change the character of a company and when things turn down, looting ones own rep is a common strategy.
State Farm is a mutual organization. That maybe gives you a good chance in the long run. Another possibility is ...strong regulation.
Schwab is pretty good; they took over USAA's investment management business (which I had been part of), so now USAA can focus solely on the insurance business.
You’re too easy on American Airlines. Their engine removal procedure was shameful.
Wasn't it more McDonnell-Douglas' fault?
Not in my view. I was familiar with the accident, but the wiki article is pretty good. American had rejected McDonnell-Douglas’ procedure for engine removal during inspections to save time. They developed a procedure in-house using a… forklift. This resulted in damage to the structure which eventually failed.
Steve was incorrect in stating that aileron control cables were a factor in the crash.
Hydraulic lines were severed when the engine separated from the wing. As a result of loss of hydraulic pressure, the left wing leading-edge slats slammed shut. At the high angle of attack in the take off regime, this caused the left wing to stall and the plane to roll left and descend into the ground. Had it happened at altitude, it could very well have been survivable.
The responsible American Airlines crew chief killed himself the night before he was to be deposed by McDonnell-Douglas.
Thanks for the information. Upon more research, you are absolutely correct. I vividly remember the Chicago crash in 1979.
McDonnell-Douglas' rear cargo hatch design was the cause of the 1974 Paris crash. Definitely the fault of McDonnell-Douglas.
Later in 1979, some test pilots were doing Dutch rolls in a 707. They overdid the recovery and snapped three of the four engines along with their pylons off the wings. They belly-landed it in a field in Snohomish, WA.
Good plane, the 707.
Edit: This accident was 1959, not ‘79.
Wasn't the F104 the jet that nearly killed Chuck Yeager? Great scene from "The Right Stuff".
Lisa Su of AMD and Jensen Huang of Nvidia are cousins and neither are heritage Americans, does knowing that impact trust in either company?
Costco clearly does not trust its customers, every cart and receipt are cross checked as they leave the store. This annoys me to no end!
That particular F-104 was a special high-altitude research vehicle. It had reaction thrusters for use at altitudes where aerodynamic control forces were ineffective.
There’s a cardiac surgeon in the Philadelphia area whose father was an Italian Air Force general who flew F-104s. He’s a complete airplane nut. Hopefully he doesn’t end up buying a Bonanza.
PK Dick fans know the answer isn't Runciter Associates.
As a Navy Junior, I've had my own USAA auto & life insurance and other products since '81, and if they're the best, other insurance companies must be awful. Took 6 weeks for an auto claim. No idea why I've stuck with them.
It was RJR Nabisco-- now back to R J Reynolds Tobacco. My mother had a small amount of stock because her mother's half-cousin had married a minor Reynolds, and on bad advice, Dad sold it three years before the buyout ballooned its value. Two decades later, I discovered her foundation bankrolled the non-profit that then rented half my dad's small office building, so we got some of it back.
I just got out of everything USAA. 57 years with the company and they had forgotten everything they were about. Seems to be the American way anymore. I can’t even trust my plumber to do a good job. I think I’ll take a pass on AI and own my incompetent self or incontinent self as it were.
The auto claim was in '98. They messed up other things more recently, and my bundled homeowner's is now higher than my property tax. I'm ready to ditch Wells Fargo (they bought the wreckage that First Union made of once-mighty Wachovia after 2001). So far, it has taken 3 visits and 2 calls to CA to rollover a CD IRA into a brokerage one.
USAA is cheap because you have to be your own claims adjuster. So far it's still worth it to me.
My main concern was the bank. A mess. I stopped driving regularly and switched to another company. It was a good first 50 years but for me the service went down as the membership increased and the marketing became the chief focus.
I was under the impression it was the prices. A couple decades ago an insurance salesman told me when he found out someone was with USAA he didn't even bother.
With all the service academy race scandals, how in the world would USAA even be considered?
Their CEO has not been a retired officer since 2020, and the new one's first name is Juan, formerly of the DEA and Off of SECDEF, and with a degree in journalism. What's not to love?
https://www.usaa.com/about/corporate/ceo/?akredirect=true
This is a post that makes me miss the Unz site because there are so many potential paths the discussion could go.
I have a fondness for the F-104 because it was the first model airplane I built, a gift from my grandfather aged neighbor who was an amateur pilot and whose oldest son was an F-14 and then F-18 pilot in the Navy. He also bought me an A-4 model, which is more true to his family’s service branch, but I built the F-104 first because it looked so space age. Great memories I hadn’t thought of in years.
Any any rate the ChatGPT list looks pretty solid. The WSJ has had some interesting articles and videos lately on their new CEO and Kirkland brand. It’s mildly annoying that they still openly praise DEI, but it does seem to be a company with a conscience that prizes its relationship with its customers. Kirkland AI would be a winner and remain free of the PE vultures.
> This is a post that makes me miss the Unz site because there are so many potential paths the discussion could go.
Agree.
One of those tangents: I was curious how closely ChatGPT 4o might match Steve's highly opinionated assessment of the F-104.
**Me**: Compare the F-104 Starfighter to other contemporary first-generation jet-powered warplanes with similar mission profiles. Briefly contrast the overall design philosophies. Discuss these planes' track records with respect to fulfilling their missions, reliability, safety (including crashes and fatalities), and length of time they remained in service.
**ChatGPT**: The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, developed in the mid-1950s, was one of several post-WWII, early jet-powered interceptors and fighter-bombers designed for high-speed performance during the Cold War. To understand its place in history, we can compare it to several contemporaries with similar mission profiles: the MiG-21, Dassault Mirage III, and English Electric Lightning. These were all first- or early second-generation supersonic jet fighters intended primarily for interception, though some evolved into multi-role aircraft.
Design Philosophies [table snipped to avoid tl;dr]
Mission Effectiveness [table snipped]
Safety, Reliability, and Fatality Records
F-104 -- Notorious for high crash rate—especially in German service, where over 900 aircraft were delivered and around 300 crashed, killing ~116 pilots. Called "Widowmaker" and "Flying Coffin." Some design flaws (e.g., poor low-speed handling) and training/maintenance issues contributed.
[remainder of table snipped]
Service Longevity [table snipped]
Summary [table snipped]
Conclusion:
The F-104 Starfighter was a technological leap in raw speed and altitude performance but suffered from poor handling, limited versatility, and an infamously poor safety record—especially among NATO allies. In contrast, the MiG-21 and Mirage III represented more balanced approaches, combining speed with agility and cost-effectiveness, which made them globally successful. The Lightning, while extraordinary in some performance metrics, remained a specialized solution with narrow utility.
Ultimately, the F-104 stands as a bold but flawed experiment in aerospace design—a “missile with a man in it”—whereas its peers achieved broader and more enduring operational success.
- - - - - end ChatGPT - - - - -
So on this subject, Steve and ChatGPT are in general agreement.
I wonder how much of the German experience with the F-104 was caused by crappy Northern European weather? Flying an F-104 around under a low cloud deck had to be gripping. If you ran into trouble, you couldn’t just roll level and climb to an altitude where you could work things out. I would take Italian sunny skies any day in that scenario.
I’ll differ with you here. I liked the Unz comment section software, but I think the comments here are of a much higher quality. The petty personal stuff over there drove me away for the last few years. If I never see another grown man use the word “fanboy”, I’ll die happy.
There was definitely a lot to wade through and obviously some childish sniping, but a number of commenters I enjoyed didn’t come over to Substack. Hopefully the commenter base here grows a bit more.
Pretty trivial to run your own AI. Download your favourite studio of choice (LMStudio in my case), get your favourite model from Hugging Face (for you, I recommend Megabeam Mistral 7B because of the ability to handle longer documents such as substack posts) and run it. You’ll need an actual desktop computer with an Nvidia graphics card (get a 4090 RTX).
For users who want to get help with non-document type knowledge tasks, Mistral 8x22B Instruct v01 is a more flexible Mixture of Experts model.
In any event, if you have more questions about AI, feel free to reach out. It’s not rocket science; they’re just neural nets. If you’d like to finetune one for a different ideological or ethical take, this is also possible.
McDonnell-Douglas was bought by Boeing in the mid-90s so it is part of history. But it is a history of greed and carelessness. When they came up with the DC-10 in 1970, they made the cargo door one that opened outwards so they could fit more luggage and the other cargo. It failed one pressure test but McDonnell-Douglas was competing with Boeing's 747 so the pressure test failure was ignored. All so well until June 12, 1972. The cargo door blew off just after takeoff and took with it some of the rear floor of the plane. Some of the hydraulic wires were ripped apart from the door blowing open. Fortunately, some hydraulic lines weren't ruptured and a very skilled pilot named Bryce McCormick was able to land the plane back at Detroit. But it wasn't a happy ending two years later on March 3, 1974 when a cargo door blew open on Turkish Airlines Flight 981. All the hydraulics were ripped apart and the pilots were helpless. The plane crashed outside Paris, killing 346 people. All blood on the hands of McDonnell-Douglas.
Yes, that’s like building submarines with inward opening hatches. Ridiculous.
By the way, I just watched the McDonnell-Douglas Paris crash on some show called Mayday which re-enacts and explains various air crashes. It is very informative,
Thanks, I’ll have a look.
I drive a Ford-150 and it's a fine truck. Every Toyota I've driven has been excellent except one, a 2005 Toyota Tundra. I later learned that in the early 2000s, Toyota Tundras did not do a good job coating their chassis so they rusted easily. I drove the Tundra for three years when my local auto mechanic showed me the severe rust on the chassis. Otherwise, I've been very happy with Toyota. I had a Highlander last 392,000 miles.
I was burned by one of the intermediate John Deere mowers. The transmission went after two years and it wasn't worth fixing. I later learned that most small and intermediate John Deere mowers are crap.
One company I rather liked when I ran a business was Uline which sells shipping supplies. It was always reliable, an important quality in the business world. If I asked Uline for something before 5PM, it would arrive the next day.
I’ve had very good luck with Fords, at least their trucks.
Lockheed Martin seems to be a well-run company these days. I bought some of its precursor Martin Marietta the day after the '87 crash, put it on dividend reinvestment for several decades, and now my annual dividends are 30% higher than my original investment. Wish my other picks had done half as well.