Newsletter
REVOKE
Congress takes aim at trucking's oldest disappearing act.
Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski, Paul Jaroslawski · September 9, 2026 · 6 min read
PRESENTED BY |  |
Happy Hump Day. Congress takes aim at trucking's oldest disappearing act: shutting down and reopening clean under a new name.
Plus:
FBI Investigates Nexus License Data Leak
Imperative Logistics Group Sues Alabama Motor Express
AAA Reports Diesel's Second Record This Week
& more.
💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:
U.S. diesel hit $___ a gallon this week, a new all-time high that broke the previous record set in June 2022.
🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT
🚨 FBI Investigates Nexus License Data Leak. A dark-web service called Nexus surfaced on a Russian cybercrime forum late last month, advertising access to more than 153 million driver's license scans from the U.S. and Canada, with the count growing by roughly 400,000 new images a day before the listing disappeared hours after security researchers published their findings. Some of the records were labeled CDL or ECDL, FreightWaves reported, a detail that matters for shipping companies that check a license before releasing a load. The FBI has confirmed it is investigating, though the source of the breach remains unconfirmed. A stolen scan of a real license still passes a visual check, since it verifies that the document is genuine, not that the person holding it is who they claim to be.
🕵️ Imperative Logistics Group Sues Alabama Motor Express. Oregon-based Imperative Logistics is suing Alabama Motor Express and two former employees, alleging a coordinated effort that pulled five staffers out the door along with confidential pricing data. One former sales representative allegedly forwarded customer financials, sales codes, and a live competitive bid to his personal email before resigning, then pursued his former employer's largest account weeks after receiving a cease-and-desist letter. A former director of operations is accused of logging back into the company's Google Drive nearly two months after leaving to view 36 confidential files. Imperative's complaint alleges AMX "facilitated, and benefited from" the scheme with full knowledge of the employees' contractual obligations, and is seeking a restraining order, an injunction, and damages to be proven at trial. Neither company has commented publicly.
⛽️ AAA Reports Diesel's Second Record This Week. The national average hit $5.90 a gallon this week, topping the mark it set only days earlier and blowing past the old 2022 record by nearly a dime. The strange part is what's driving it: crude oil is trading almost $30 below its recent record, so this spike is coming from refineries, not wells. Distillate inventories are sitting at their lowest late-summer level since 1951, refiners are running flat out at 98% capacity and still falling behind, and the Strait of Hormuz remains a wildcard after the U.S.-Iran conflict. Grocers already pass 15% to 30% of their shipping costs through to shelf prices, and fuel surcharges are about to reflect the increase at the fuel pump.
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REVOKE Act Targets Chameleon Carriers
Between 10% and 20% of carriers on the road today may not be who their paperwork says they are.
That estimate came from trucking safety consultant Rob Carpenter on a CBS 60 Minutes segment in April, describing operators that shut down under one name and reopen under another to escape fines, insurance consequences, and poor safety scores, all while keeping the same trucks, drivers, and addresses. Congress introduced a bill this month aimed directly at that loophole.
What the bill does. Reps. Dave Taylor and Shomari Figures introduced the REVOKE Act, which targets a gap that has nothing to do with paperwork errors and everything to do with what the law actually requires. Right now, federal rules only say a carrier must have a USDOT number. Nothing says that the number has to stay in good standing. So a carrier can accumulate violations, ignore a biennial update, or draw a red flag, and instead of fixing anything, simply shut down and register fresh under a new number. Same equipment, same people, clean slate. The REVOKE Act would allow the Secretary of Transportation to deactivate a number the moment a carrier falls out of compliance and to block a new number from being issued until the old one is squared away.
The scale of the problem. Fusable, the risk-assessment firm that coined the term "chameleon carrier" over a decade ago, has found that these operators are four times more likely to be involved in a crash than carriers with clean histories. The 60 Minutes segment centered on a network called Super Ego Holding, tied to nearly 15,000 safety violations and roughly 500 crashes over two years while hauling for customers including Amazon, Walmart, and Costco. More than 800 drivers are now suing, and the FMCSA has an active investigation open.
Why this matters for brokers. This bill hasn't cleared committee yet. But it's pointing at something worth knowing regardless: the law has never required a carrier to keep a number in good standing, only to have one.
ATA's Alex Rosen put it plainly: chameleon carriers "evade federal oversight by cycling through new registrations, putting everyone at risk." That's been true for years, and nothing currently stops it.
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🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB
📦 CargoNet Tracks $31.8M in Labor Day Theft. Cargo theft during the holiday period hit a five-year high, and most of it occurred on ordinary weekdays, not on the weekend itself.
🚓 Indiana Troopers Seize $3.8M in Cocaine. A routine commercial vehicle inspection on I-70 turned up more than the driver's paperwork explained.
🤖 Kodiak Nears Driverless Long-Haul Launch. The autonomous trucking company says it has closed most of the gap standing between it and a fully driverless route.
🛣️ Texas Unveils $138 Billion Transportation Plan. The headline number looks like an expansion, but it's actually smaller than the state's last plan.
📈 Trucking Adds Jobs, Remains Down Year-Over-Year. August was the industry's best month of hiring in nearly a year, though the sector still hasn't recovered what it lost.
🎣 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR CORNER
Earning the Freight: What separates preferred transportation providers? Hear live from James Hardie & GoodShip leaders on trust, data, and performance.
😂 FREIGHT HUMOR
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🎧 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR PODCAST
Andrew Leto, Founder at GlobalTranz, Emerge, and now Felix AI, joined Reed Loustalot on the FreightCaviar Podcast to discuss how AI agents could help carriers find more loads, why margins could fall from 12–13% to 8–9%, and why Andrew believes carrier-side technology and carrier data could become the biggest opportunity in trucking.
The FreightCaviar Podcast: Listen to this week's episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch the interview on YouTube.
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