We’ve built a supply chain that’s very good at one thing: creating distance. Distance between the shipper and the truck. Distance between the contract and the carrier actually hauling the load. Distance between responsibility and accountability.
And that’s where the risk hides.
We spend a lot of time talking about bad actors — Driver Inc., non-compliant carriers, wheel separations, scale skipping and all other manner of egregious safety violations — but recent developments on both sides of the border point to a bigger issue: the deeper the subcontracting chain, the harder it is to know who’s really moving the freight.
And who’s responsible when something goes sideways. In Canada, that came into focus during parliamentary hearings involving Canada Post. Executives were adamant: they don’t use Driver Inc. in their supply chain.
But that wasn’t the end of the discussion. MPs pushed back, citing reporting and testimony suggesting those practices can still exist further down the chain — beyond the direct carriers Canada Post contracts with. That’s the problem in a nutshell.
On paper, everything can look clean. The primary carrier checks out. The contract is compliant. But once that freight starts moving through layers of subcontracting, visibility drops off quickly.
And with it, accountability. Look no further than many of the most outspoken critics of the Driver Inc. model who also act as the scheme’s biggest enablers by assigning loads to such carriers through their brokerage divisions.
Driver Inc. may be a Canadian term, but this isn’t just a Canadian issue.
In the U.S., the trucking industry’s seedy underbelly is getting prime-time attention. A recent 60 Minutes investigation looked at so-called “chameleon carriers” — companies that rack up safety violations, shut down, and then pop back up under a new name.
Different company on paper. Same operation on the road.
The report also highlighted cases like SuperEgo, where a network of related entities allegedly allowed trucks to keep running despite enforcement actions that should have shut them down. It’s not hard to see how that happens.
When freight is passed from one company to another — sometimes multiple times — it becomes very difficult to trace who is actually responsible for the move. And very easy for bad actors to stay in the game. Not that long ago, SuperEgo was named carrier of the year by a massive international freight brokerage.
For a long time, enforcement has focused on the carrier. That’s where the regulations sit, and that’s who gets audited. But that’s starting to change.
U.S. regulators, including the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, have begun signaling they’re willing to look beyond the truck, at brokers, and increasingly, even at shippers themselves.
The message is pretty simple: if you’re tendering freight to companies that shouldn’t be operating, you may share some responsibility.
That’s a big shift.
Because none of these business models — not Driver Inc., not chameleon carriers, not layered subcontracting — work without freight. Someone is giving them loads.
It’s easy for shippers to say they can’t control what happens beyond their direct contract. They say once they’ve hired a reputable carrier, the job is done.
But in a world where freight can be re-brokered two or three times before it hits the road, that argument doesn’t hold up the way it used to.
Not when the rate is suspiciously low. Not when the same names keep showing up in enforcement actions. Not when regulators are starting to connect the dots.
The reality is, we’ve built a system where accountability gets diluted at every handoff. Everyone owns a piece of the move. No one owns the whole thing.
That thinking needs to change.
Insurance costs are climbing. Litigation is getting more aggressive. Enforcement is tightening. And public scrutiny — especially after stories like the one on 60 Minutes — is only going to increase.
The weak links in the chain aren’t as hidden as they used to be. So, what does that mean for shippers?
It doesn’t mean auditing every truck at the gate. But it does mean asking harder questions before the freight ever moves.
Who is actually hauling this load? Is it being re-brokered? Do the economics make sense for a compliant operation?
Because the further freight gets from the shipper, the murkier it becomes. And right now, there’s a lot happening in that murk.
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