After a bombshell report on 60 Minutes painted Super Ego as a "chameleon carrier" network that cheated on ELDs, underpaid carriers, and flouted safety enforcement, CBS followed up with another report on its Sunday morning news program citing sources describing serious wrongdoing at mega broker C.H. Robinson.
Now, both Super Ego and C.H. Robinson have responded, disputing different claims in the CBS report, but agreeing on one thing: This is all basically just one big misunderstanding.
Super Ego, accused by sources in 60 Minutes of electronic logging device tampering, skimming money from drivers' pay, and orchestrating a complicated web of "chameleon carriers" to avoid enforcement, denied that it was a motor carrier at all.
“Super Ego Holding, a U.S.-based leasing company, is committed to transparency, compliance, and high standards of professional conduct,” the company said in a statement published by the Serbian Times. It continued:
“The company calls on the public and media to understand a fundamental fact that the segment ignored entirely: Super Ego is an equipment leasing company, not a carrier company. Every claim made in the segment, including allegations about driver clocks, DOT rate sheets, DOT numbers, and pay, is false and derives from this central misunderstanding."
Yet, Super Ego did not deny that it was a carrier in September when C.H. Robinson named it the 2025 Carrier of the Year in the 1,000+-trucks category. That's despite the fact that there isn't any carrier entity registered with the DOT bearing the name "Super Ego" that lists more than 1,000 trucks.
C.H. Robinson, accused by sources in the Sunday CBS follow-up of loading unsafe and chameleon carriers and even encouraging a carrier with a bad safety record to start a new carrier entity, also accused the news network of "misleading" reporting.
"As a federally licensed freight broker, safety is a top priority, which is why we only work with carriers authorized by the federal government," C.H. Robinson said in a statement published on their website.
CBS cited a videotaped deposition of Alexander Delgado, owner of BLF Truck Transportation, saying a contact at C.H. Robinson told him to start a new carrier entity after his previous one had been shut down over safety concerns, for instance. That's not suggesting the mega broker doesn't work with federally authorized carriers.
"I knew the company was going to be shut down, and I told [my contact at C.H. Robinson] it was going to be closed," Delgado testified, according to CBS. "And he just said, 'Open up another one.'"
Delgado is saying the opposite: That C.H. Robinson told him to seek federal authorization to continue hauling for them, despite a bad safety record.
That's the whole problem with "chameleon carriers" -- not that they aren't federally authorized, but that they're unaccountable to their own safety history, often simply unsafe.
C.H. Robinson in its lengthy statement didn't get very specific about what was misleading in CBS's reporting, which largely draws on court documents and a videotaped deposition.
But the mega broker did push back against Delgado's claims that a C.H. Robinson employee coached him to open another fleet, telling CBS that it "comes from a carrier owner whose credibility is in question."
Reached for comment a spokesperson for CBS said the following: “We stand by our reporting.”
[Related: Dalilah's Law passes committee as Congress debates non-citizen drivers, ELP, CDL mills]
C.H. Robinson claims to put a lot of stock in FMCSA authorizing carriers, even as it touts its own carrier vetting and AI-implementation to root out fraud. "We work exclusively with carriers that have been vetted and licensed by" FMCSA, according to the company statement.
Yet the broker calls on FMCSA to step up enforcement.
"The FMCSA is uniquely positioned to evaluate carrier safety," C.H. Robinson said. "As a federal agency, it has access to confidential driver records and data that no broker can obtain, giving it the authority and expertise to vet carriers."
The mega broker expresses support of Dalilah's Law, which would ban foreign dispatch services, cement FMCSA's ban on non-domiciled CDLs and boost in English language proficiency enforcement, among a raft of other initiatives.
FMCSA has also vowed to step up enforcement in other ways, specifically with regard to chameleon carriers.
