It's a steamy Saturday in Houston, a day so piping hot that one would gladly consider diving into a vat of Texas chili for relief. But chili is a messy business, so instead, half the population seems to have taken refuge in their air-conditioned cars, choking Houston's freeways as a result. For Kristen Botello, all those cars mean just one thing: lots of accidents.

She's not rooting for wrecks. But she knows from experience that accidents happen. And when they do, she wants to be on the scene immediately -- before the police arrive, before a wrecker tows away the cars. Why all the urgency? Because Botello, 28, settles claims for Progressive Corp., an auto-insurance maverick that has built a prosperous, fast-growing company around speed, service, and software.

Around lunchtime, Botello's two-way radio crackles with a message. "Kristen, we've got a scene," says the dispatcher. She heads for the freeway in a Ford Explorer with the label "PROGRESSIVE" emblazoned on both sides. Accidents are like mysteries, she says. And like any good detective, Botello doesn't want the scene disturbed. Sometimes she shows up so quickly that all the clues are still in place: the skid marks, the witnesses, the cars resting in post-collision chaos. Botello inspects the vehicles, assesses the damage, does her analysis, whips out her laptop, downloads a claim file, and cuts a check on the spot. Case closed.

Wait a minute. A claims adjuster who works weekends? Who rushes to the scene of an accident? Who settles a claim in minutes rather than months? Do not adjust your monitor. These are just some of the day-to-day realities of life at Progressive. "We're leading a wave of change," declares Peter Lewis, 64, CEO of the 15,000-person operation based in Mayfield Village, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. "Before, you had 300 companies marching in a straight line. Everybody -- State Farm, Allstate, Nationwide -- did business the same way. Then Progressive broke out of the line and started doing things differently. After a while, everybody looked over and said, 'They're making wider margins than we are! They're growing faster than we are! What are they doing?' "

What they're doing is running circles around the competition. The auto-insurance industry is so notorious for high prices, bloated bureaucracies, and poor service that it has sparked state-level political revolts across the country. The industry as a whole has run at an underwriting loss over the past five years. (In other words, companies have collected less in premiums than they've paid out in claims and expenses.) Progressive, by contrast, has generated healthy underwriting margins of 8% over the same period of time. Last year, its annual revenues exceeded $4.6 billion -- up by more than 36% from the previous year (a growth rate that is six times the industry average). Lately Progressive shares have traded for as high as $156, up from $42 as recently as 1996. The result: Progressive -- which, in Lewis's words, used to be dismissed as "a piddling little outfit in Ohio that does oddball things" -- is now the fifth-largest U.S. auto insurer.