Tennessee puts me on high-alert

This is something I want to share with the forum membership as a kind of advisory notice.

Twice in the last couple of months I believe I have had people try to use me in an insurance scam.

A couple of weeks back I was driving into Memphis West bound on I40. At one point you need to exit and merge onto another roadway. Both directions do this, squeezing all of I40 into one lane....drives me nuts. But anyway, on the West bound side, you're on-ramp becomes an off-ramp in about 500 ft or so. So as I come up the ramp and see that I need to move over one lane to my left I put on my left turn signal and see a car to my left passing me. As he moves in front of me I move over to the left behind him. I don't have a lot of time to move over as my lane is about to become an exit ramp. As soon as I get behind him all I see are red break lights. I try to put my foot through the floor of my truck and hear the squeel of rubber. I manage not to rear-end the guy and he shoots off to the right just in time to exit the highway. I guess it's possible that he was just trying to make the exit, but it sure look like he was trying to get rear-ended to me.
And just today, I had to take my tractor to a Freightliner service center to have something worked on in Nashville. The Freightliner place is a little tough to see where to get into it if you've never been there. I missed my turn and had to go a bit further, get back on the interstate and come around again. The on-ramp for the highway is pretty long and has a nice wide shoulder, so I put on my hazzards and pulled onto the shoulder and called my company just to confirm that this was the Freightliner place that they wanted me to go. When I spoke to them earlier they just said, "head to Freightliner in Nashville", but a google search on my phone shows a couple of places. As I'm making this quick call, I see that a car pulled over onto the shoulder and parked behind me. After I confirm that I am going to the right place, I merge onto the highway and see the car follow. At the next exit, he stays behind me and makes the same right turn I do. We're coming up on the Freightliner SC, and the road divides into 2 lanes, so I slow down to about 20mph. The car comes up beside me with his window down and I roll down mine. The guy driving leans over and tells me "You hit my car with your truck", to which I replay "no I didn't" and roll up my window. This time I make the right turn I need to get into the Freightiner service center and I see him follow me in. I slowly drive back to the service area, and park next to a Tennessee State Police mobile command unit, that looks like a RV, but with Tennessee State Police all over it.
I get out my tractor and walk all around it looking for any maroon paint (the color of the guys car) or signs of abrasion on metal, tires and lug-nuts on my steers. I can't see any evidence of any sort of recent contact with anything. So then I start looking for this guy. I walk all over the lot and he's nowhere to be seen. I'm pretty sure this was another attempt at an insurance scam and the guy probably was scared off by the State Police vehicle. But, I had to call my company who advised me to call the Nashville PD, which I did. The officer I spoke to said that since the guy wasn't there, there was no point in sending an officer and that the call was taped and I'd be covered if anyone called in reporting an accident involving my truck.


So, I know that insurance scams are a nationwide problem, but Tennessee sure seems to have it's share of insurance swindlers.

Be safe out there ladies and gents, these guys will no doubt get better at these types of scams the more they practice.