Indiana State Police has involved the FBI in investigating Majestic Cargo Lines, a South Bend-based trucking company, for allegedly manipulating electronic logging devices to cheat driver hours and skim driver pay. The company's owner denies the allegations, claiming they stem from disgruntled former employees, while the investigation highlights broader challenges regulators face in detecting ELD tampering.
- Indiana State Police and FBI are investigating Majestic Cargo Lines, a 45-truck South Bend-based motor carrier, for ELD fraud and driver pay-skimming allegations.
- Company owner Nikola Gavrilovic denies the allegations, attributing them to fired former employees and citing a recent satisfactory FMCSA audit.
- The investigation reveals use of encrypted messaging apps like Viber where drivers allegedly request hours resets, a tactic documented at multiple fleets.
- Majestic uses Motive and Extreme ELD systems, with Extreme ELD sharing technology with manipulable devices that leave no trace in driver records.
- States like Arizona, Oregon, and Alabama have proven more effective at detecting ELD tampering, while many regulators struggle to catch remote manipulation during roadside inspections.
Indiana State Police have involved the FBI in an investigation of Majestic Cargo Lines, the South Bend-based 45-truck motor carrier, over allegations of ELD fraud and driver pay skimming.
Majestic owner Nikola Gavrilovic denied those allegations, attributing them to disgruntled, fired former employees, and said his fleet recently completed an Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration audit.
"I fired one dispatcher and a couple owner-operators that worked for me, and they got pretty upset, so I'm guessing" one of them made false reports, said Gavrilovic.
Overdrive spoke to two former drivers for Majestic. One driver, who said he hopes to return to the company, also denied the ELD cheating and pay-skimming claims. That driver sent a recording of Overdrive's call to Gavrilovic.
The second driver alleged ELD cheating and pay skimming.
When Overdrive called Majestic's dispatch line and asked if hours could be reset, the representative there said to ask "on the Viber group," referring to an encrypted messaging app.
Overdrive has documented several fleets' use of various, often white-labeled ELDs, or ELDs that share the same core technology but are registered and marketed by separate business entities. Such fleets have typically maintained an encrypted chat where drivers can request to have their hours reset.
Gavrilovic confirmed Majestic has a Viber chat group where drivers can request hours resets, but denied they actually grant those requests.
"Dispatch is just doing the dispatch, they don’t do anything with the fleet," said Gavrilovic. "If you call dispatch and say, 'Can you change my tire?', they tell you that you can go to the Viber group and someone will tell, 'Call this guy for repair.'"
Gavrilovic said Majestic uses two ELDs. Overdrive contacted a researcher with inside knowledge of white-labeled, manipulable ELD networks who noted one of the ELDs does share technology with devices that allow tampering.
FMCSA records show Majestic was investigated with a routine audit in July of 2026, and Gavrilovic said that included an investigator visiting his office and reviewing drivers' Records of Duty Status (RODS), passing them.
Overdrive previously reported that manipulatable ELDs leave no trace of remote changes in the RODS. Often, inspectors are limited at roadside by time -- they need to move fast to catch, for instance, a driver over hours before there's a chance to contact call centers and get hours reset or otherwise corrected.
While the entire episode with Majestic and Gavrilovic is a bit of a he-said, she-said situation, it highlights the real difficulty law enforcement and regulators have with uncovering ELD cheats.
At Roadcheck this year, Overdrive visited three states and found varying degrees of capability when it comes to detecting remote manipulation of this type.
In October, Overdrive attended a meeting between fleet owner Zach Meiborg, FMCSA, and Illinois State Police. Meiborg showed one of his trucks running a manipulable ELD and a Meiborg driver demonstrating how to get the hours reset on the spot with a phone call.
The ELD that Meiborg demonstrated could fake hours hasn't been revoked yet. In fact, even when FMCSA does revoke ELDs, it does so one at a time, even as researchers flag to the agency that hundreds of the revoked devices use identical technology.
Some states have cracked the code on catching this new breed of ELD cheats, specifically Arizona and Oregon, and more recently Alabama, judging by the number of tampering violations state inspectors have written.
While Indiana State Police confirmed Majestic was under investigation, that doesn't mean the fleet or Gavrilovic are guilty of any crimes.
FMCSA did not respond to Overdrive requests for comment on this story.
Below find a list of the toughest states for ELD cheating enforcement based on Overdrive and sister Fusable company RigDig's analysis of federal data.
