Electronic logging device fraud, the way as many as a million non-compliant trucks have undercut the industry and run rates into the ground, leaves a victim too often overlooked: The drivers.
Overdrive's reported extensively on law enforcement struggles to bring backend ELD manipulation to heel, likewise the fleets who run their drivers ragged.
Often enough, driver voices answer back.
The voices are sometimes frantic, scattered and scared. With time itself stacked against them, drivers lose their grip on linear storytelling, like words running into the margins and off the page.
"If I tell you anything, if I tell you what I know, if I give you evidence -- can you do something about it? It's bigger than what you wrote," one driver said. "From top to bottom, cover-ups, crooked cops, fake loads, fake warehouses," an entire fake industry runs on the backs of drivers pushed to haul way over hours day in and day out.
"Death jockeys," one driver dubbed himself and others caught up in these schemes.
For most drivers under these arrangements, 14 hours, already over federal limits, is just a start.
"Every day if you ran your 11 hours, let's say you were five hours from your delivery they would just back your log book up so you had another five or six hours to run so you could continue," one driver said. Some drivers reported hauling as many as 22 hours in a day.
Many worked in the Super Ego network of chameleon carriers, some describing their employers as "mafiosos" engaged in theft and violence.
The honeymoon
It's often personal misfortune or family tragedy that drags a driver down to the level of accepting such work. A failed drug test, a sick family member, maybe just changing companies too many times.
At first, these drivers find success. "The marriage bed," as one driver described it.
"When you first come in, the four weeks or six weeks they give you everything, 'Don’t worry, it's all good,'" she said.
Another said that, although he was surprised to find his company allowed ELD fraud, big-name shippers appeared to be in on the deal.
"I went from Chicago to a place called Galesburg, Illinois, to a big food warehouse," said one driver. "I get up there and checked in and go wait" and ended up falling asleep while waiting on the load.
After getting in at around 9 p.m., that driver woke up around 6 the next morning and got word his load was ready.
"I still got two hours I gotta wait for my clock to catch up to me," the driver told his dispatcher. "Oh no, no, no," was the answer from the dispatcher, likely based in Bosnia, according to the driver. "They magically fixed my clock."
The shippers "were in cahoots with them," the driver claimed.
One driver described elaborate operations with "spotters," or cars that warn non-compliant trucks about law enforcement on the highways.
When running "some kind of fake load, it can be drugs, can be whatever," a lot of these fleets have eyes on the law. "After 5 p.m., they have watchers that know how many cops are on the road," the driver said. "They have escorts."
For any problems -- running out of hours, running into cops -- there's always a number to call. Often there's chat groups maintained on encrypted messaging networks like Viber or Telegram. The people on the other end of the line aren't in the U.S., either, as one driver pegged these operations as being run "90% out of the country."
If there's police ahead, they'll send you on a different route.
Drivers reported participating in cargo theft, fencing stolen goods, and switching out DOT numbers on the side of the truck as a regular practice.
[Related: How 1M ELD fraudsters broke trucking, and how to save it]
How it ends, wheels on or off
After the honeymoon period, the wheels fall off, sometimes literally.
Despite running more hours than legally available, even the hottest-of-hot stolen freight, "these loads don't pay," one driver said. $1,200 to the driver on a load that paid $6,000 total. Fuel surcharges that never make it to the leased driver paying at the pump. Shops that "won't even touch" a chameleon carrier's truck because they know the carrier won't pay.
Drivers end up stranded.
"$22,000 they owe me, and when I stand up to them, they block the truck in and tow it away," one said.
Of course there's bait-and-switch with lease agreements, shoddy equipment, and broken promises among these carriers, drivers said.
The health impact of operating with all these stressors leaves drivers themselves chewed up, worn down to the wires like old tires.
"Needless to say, it ruined me," said one driver.
"Once you work for them, trying to get a job is ridiculous -- it becomes difficult," said another. That driver reported living in her car, with a few belongings in a storage container, looking for work driving, or maybe somewhere off-highway.
The basic problem has been around trucking for a long time, yet since the dawn of the ELD mandate, it's only gotten worse. "Whoever let these bozos in, they started multiplying like sadistic rabbits," one driver said about the shady carriers.
[Related: FMCSA will 'hold violators fully accountable' after ELD fraud scandal revealed]
What is being done about ELD fraud?
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration knows about this problem. On Oct. 28, Overdrive saw firsthand as fleet owner Zach Meiborg's driver pulled a truck with a fraudulent ELD into the Dekalb Police Station in Illinois. FMCSA investigators on hand admitted this wasn't nearly the first time they'd caught wind of remote manipulation of records, leaving next to no trace.
Since January 2025, FMCSA has significantly accelerated enforcement against ELDs, revoking more than 95 from the federal registry for failing to meet minimum standards. Enhanced vetting on the front end, implemented in 2025, has blocked 552 additional ELD vendor applications.
Below find Overdrive's latest state-to-state accounting with sister Fusable company RigDig, charting just where inspectors are finding the new violation, recorded in these cases as the 395.8e-HOSPELDT violation, as advised by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.
Data as of mid-October shows more than five thousand individual DOT numbers have one or more such tampering violations, CVSA's new out-of-service code for remote ELD manipulation, with a total of more than 16,000 violations recorded by inspectors.
FMCSA has released new guidance on what to do about drivers being coerced into violating safety regulations, and invites drivers who are victims of this kind of scheme to come forward.
Yet some Overdrive spoke to said they had reported fraud, told police, family, loved ones, FMCSA, anyone who would listen until hope ran out.
Several drivers in this situation refused to say much, or talk at all, saying there was no point.
Super Ego recently relaunched operations. Plenty of fleets with credible accusations of ELD fraud continue to run. The very ELD that FMCSA investigators saw hacked in Dekalb continues to be registered with FMCSA.
That ELD shares identical backend technology with dozens of others that continue to operate.
Some of the drivers Overdrive spoke with have landed elsewhere, on their feet at aboveboard fleets. Some got involved in the class action lawsuit against Super Ego. Others feel alone with their stories and nobody to believe them, bearing the damage of round-the-clock hauling, skimmed pay and a shattered sense of dignity, a sense that they've been used up and spit out.
None have the whole story or all the answers, and many have given up on ever finding justice.
Clearly, ELD fraud is real. The American trucking industry and its proud drivers are being dragged along like so many interchangeable dry vans, tossed aside when they start to come apart. In the process, these drivers catch glimpses of the truth, however fleeting, like headlights down the highway.
And they're not interchangeable, not meant to be tossed aside -- they're moms and dads, brothers and sisters, husbands, wives. They're people with problems, sure, but drivers, working to deliver the good people of the world the things they depend on.
Drivers, if you've been coerced or compelled to drive over hours, collect evidence, report it to FMCSA, and get in touch with [email protected].
[Related: How would you rewrite truckers' hour of service regs?]
