By now, everyone has seen the horrific images from the fatal crash in Texas, caused by a semi-truck driver who fell asleep behind the wheel. While media outlets have zeroed in on the driver’s nationality and immigration status, the real issue—the one that should concern all of us—is this: the company that employed him should never have been operating in the first place.
The investigation that followed uncovered that the carrier was a non-citizen trucking operations exploiting non-domiciled drivers, using virtual addresses in the U.S. to register with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) while actually operating out of other countries like in Eastern Europe or Russia. These carriers exist on paper only—shell companies dispatching trucks remotely, often with no real oversight, regulation, or liability.
This same thing is happening in Canada. And it's been ignored for years.
In my blog post “Hey Transport Canada, Take a Page Out of the FMCSA’s Book on Chameleon Carriers,” I discussed the FMCSA’s new national registration program called Motus. Motus is designed to identify so-called “chameleon carriers” by creating a national data base that will flag companies that share the same addresses, phone numbers, or ownership information.
The numbers out of the U.S. are staggering:
Why should Canada care? Because we are no different—and in some ways, worse.
Canada’s carrier profile system hasn’t allowed enforcement data to be shared seamlessly across provinces or with international partners for years. We’ve ignored the problem and the inaccurate carrier profile data, hoping it will resolve itself. It won’t. This is our opportunity to join with the United States and Mexico and create compatible registry systems that can track and flag suspicious operations in real time. We should be integrating with Motus, not pretending this is someone else’s issue to solve.
The loopholes are being exploited daily.
Carriers operating illegally know our enforcement system is broken. They know they’re unlikely to be caught, and if they are, the consequences are minimal—especially when the carrier dosen’t exist in any meaningful way. In the Texas case, the carrier was foreign-owned, registered with fraudulent info, and employed a Cuban national. Think about it: what are the odds that this company had valid commercial insurance?
Here’s what will likely happen:
If the public knew how many trucks were operating without valid insurance—or with forged documents—they would be stunned. Commercial trucking insurance is extremely expensive, and freight rates are shockingly low. Carriers that play by the rules are being pushed out because they cannot compete with companies that skip insurance, taxes, source deductions, fair wages, and maintenance.
What’s enabling this insurance fraud? A lack of centralized data.
Unlike vehicle registrations or driver’s licenses, there is no real-time insurance database available to enforcement officers. When a driver is pulled over, they show a pink insurance card—sometimes altered or completely fake. The insurance status is taken at face value because there is no place for an officer to check. Most people only discover the coverage is fake after a crash.
So what’s the fix? Centralize and share the data. Now.
If governments collaborated, created a shared national and cross-border registry system, and made real-time insurance verification available to enforcement, fraudulent carriers would be stopped in their tracks. It would also level the playing field for honest carriers—those who pay taxes, follow the rules, and put safety first.
There’s more data available than ever before. The problem isn’t lack of information—it’s that it’s scattered, siloed, and hoarded by different agencies an jurisdictions. The criminals have figured out how to exploit the cracks in the system. It’s time we closed them.
We don’t need another tragedy to act.
