The recent 60 Minutes investigation into Super Ego turned national attention towards trucking's dark secret: Chameleon carriers.
But while thousands, maybe millions will have just heard that term for the first time, it was actually coined and trademarked by the Central Analysis Bureau company more than a decade ago.
CAB, owned by Overdrive's parent company, Fusable, gave some factual weight to the 60 Minutes report on the smoke and mirrors game played by many carriers.
A chameleon carrier, as defined by Fusable Chief Product Officer Shuie Yankelewitz, is a carrier that shuts down after accumulating violations and reopens under a new name.
"The more sophisticated version -- and the one at the center of the '60 Minutes' story -- is a ring: multiple DOT numbers operated by the same principals simultaneously, used as burners," Yankelewitz wrote. "As one accumulates violations or gets shut down by the FMCSA, freight moves to another. Sometimes a new DOT is registered; sometimes one is acquired -- occasionally illegally -- to avoid looking like a brand-new carrier."
CAB data shows chameleons are four times more likely to get into a crash than other carriers. A similar trend emerges when it comes to serious crashes.
Insurance "applicants with chameleon attributes were three times more likely than others to later be involved in a severe crash: 18% versus 6%," CAB wrote in a case study on its chameleon carrier methodology.
While CAB uses proprietary data to come up with a uniquely precise read on the danger posed by these carriers, Overdrive readers will be familiar with the real lives lost.
In February a non-domiciled CDL holder killed four in Indiana's Amish country. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration quickly investigated the carrier, found a web of interconnected carriers, and quickly began shutting them down.
"This is not an isolated incident, it exposes serious vulnerabilities," said FMCSA Administrator Barrs of the chameleon's crash in Indiana.
FMCSA has planned rapid actions against these entities to end the practice of "ghost offices," or carriers registering at addresses that can't possibly house their safety records or facilitate compliance with safety audits.
From the carrier perspective, chameleons evade enforcement, pose direct safety threats, and drive down rates with bottom-of-the-barrel practices. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy himself promised a clean-up of these bad actors and predicted "rates are going to go up" in the aftermath.
But for insurers, chameleon's efforts to evade enforcement make them nightmare clients. Only because CAB goes beyond analyzing the simple facts of a single applicant and digs deeper into that carrier's associations might they successfully avoid such risks.
"By cross-referencing unique identifiers -- such as company reps, phone numbers, addresses, financial transactions and shared equipment -- CAB’s chameleon carrier link analysis explicitly links applicants to their prior or linked operating histories and unmasks reincarnated fleets to uncover true economic reality of motor carrier risk," the CAB report on chameleons said.
The method allows CAB to flag roughly 70% of hidden chameleons, the company said, potentially saving insurers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In the end, the ability to map out networks and help insurers evaluate high risks shows that bad actors can be ID'd. Regulators need to catch up.
The 60 Minutes report certainly considered that angle, stressing that some 350 FMCSA investigators must evaluate more than 700,000 registered entities. FMCSA's Barrs, in response not just to the 60 Minutes reporter but the growing chorus of industry voices demanding compliance and equal enforcement, said the agency has a big job in front of them.
The agency in the coming months will institute Motus, an entirely new registration system with ID verification steps meant to more closely track registered entities.
Otherwise, FMCSA has taken steps to stem the flow of drivers and ELD cheating tools that allow chameleons to run cheaply and out-compete more competent operations.
[Related: Super Ego accused of ELD cheating, stealing driver pay in '60 Minutes']
