Chameleon Carrier Watch

A chameleon carrier is a motor carrier that ceases operations under one USDOT number — often after accumulating safety violations, lawsuits, or a revoked operating authority — and quickly re-registers under a new USDOT, frequently at the same address and phone, sometimes with a similar legal name. The pattern lets the operator effectively reset its public safety record without changing how it operates day-to-day. CBS's 60 Minutes ran a major April 2026 investigation on the practice, and brokers, shippers, and consumers have been searching for "is X carrier a chameleon" ever since.

Every fact behind the matches on this page comes from FMCSA's public Carrier and AuthorityEvent records. The detection itself is our work: a scan of every revoked or out-of-service carrier in the last 24 months, paired against carriers that registered at the same physical address and phone-number last-7 within 18 months of the revocation. Each pair earns up to 4 points of evidence (phone match, address match, legal-name or DBA match, tight time window) minus 1 point if the new carrier already has its own substantial inspection history. We publish a public page only for clusters scoring 3 or higher.