🎣 “Chameleon Carrier”

TGIF. In today's feature, we break down how chameleon carriers went from an industry blind spot to a national safety story.

Plus:

• A Freight Tech Super Bowl Ad (Almost)
• Uber Freight Finally Hits Breakeven
• WWEX Wins, Claims Dismissed

TOP LANE MOVERS POWERED BY TRIUMPH

🍳 What's Cookin' In Freight

🔥 A Freight Tech Super Bowl Ad (Almost). Vooma.ai just pulled off one of the smartest freight tech marketing moves we’ve seen in a while. Instead of paying $6.7M for a 30-second Super Bowl slot, CEO & Co-Founder Jesse Buckingham said “f*** that” and made their own ad. As Jesse wrote on LinkedIn: “We got quoted $6.7M for a Super Bowl ad. We passed and made our own. I present: The Fox of Freight Street.” With the Super Bowl just days away, the timing couldn’t have been better. Creative, timely, and way cheaper than $6.7M.

🚚 Uber Freight Finally Hits Breakeven. After years of skepticism and red ink, Uber Freight quietly crossed a milestone in Q4: breakeven adjusted EBITDA for the first time in more than three years. Freight gross bookings slipped 1% year over year to $1.27B as trucking demand stayed soft, but tighter cost controls helped narrow losses and get the business to zero. Meanwhile, parent Uber Technologies posted a record quarter overall, and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi pointed to autonomous vehicles as the long-term wildcard that could eventually improve freight economics. For an industry long doubtful Uber Freight would ever stop bleeding cash, breakeven alone is a notable plot twist.

⚖️ RICO Case Reversed: WWEX Wins, Claims Dismissed. Last year, Freight Essentials and its founder, Dylan Admire, publicly accused WWEX Group (the parent of GlobalTranz and Worldwide Express) of widespread misconduct, including RICO-level claims. The allegations spread quickly across podcasts and industry media. That chapter quietly closed late last year when both federal and state courts dismissed all claims with prejudice in WWEX’s favor. Freight Essentials later admitted under oath that its allegations were based on misunderstandings and were not supported by the facts. WWEX says it is moving forward, a reminder that high-profile accusations do not always hold up in court.

TOGETHER WITH TRINITY LOGISTICS

Our partnership with carrier vetting tools, combined with our early fraud and potential fraud alerts, gives an Agent the ability to make the best decision on carrier selection.

Why This “Chameleon Carrier” Story Is Suddenly Everywhere

For years, this problem lived in a dark corner of trucking.

Carriers recycling identities, swapping names, bouncing between authorities, hiding behind mailbox addresses.

Here's why that's changed and why it's important for anyone working in logistics.

1) Danielle Chaffin made it legible (and loud)

In the last few months, Danielle Chaffin has done what almost nobody was doing consistently: she’s taken a complicated compliance problem and turned it into a public narrative people can actually follow.

She’s been posting thread after thread on X, naming patterns, showing receipts, and translating “FMCSA-speak” into plain English.

She’s also been doing interviews and long-form conversations across the industry (podcasts, video, etc.), which helped move this to something the broader public is starting to pay attention to.

2) SearchCarriers made the web visible

The other reason this story is spreading is simple: people can now verify what they’re seeing.

Tools like SearchCarriers.com make it easier to connect the dots across:

• carrier history
• safety signals
• related entities
• patterns that look “too coincidental” to ignore

That matters because chameleon behavior isn’t usually one smoking gun; it’s a pattern across names, addresses, equipment, and time.

SearchCarriers helped normal people in the industry see that web without needing to be an investigator full-time.

3) Mass media are picking it up because crashes force attention

Once the public sees the pattern, it becomes hard to unsee, especially when it ties back to serious crashes.

That’s why investigations like the “Blind Spots” special are landing right now: they show how dangerous operations can keep moving through gaps in oversight, and how “the name on the truck” isn’t always the full story.

4) This isn’t a “one bad driver” issue. It’s an identity/accountability issue

Here’s the simplest way to explain the core problem: A carrier’s identity is supposed to carry its history. Inspections. Violations. Insurance. Crashes. Accountability.

Chameleon behavior breaks that link. It allows bad actors to continue operating while the paper trail appears cleaner than reality.

Answer to Question of the Day: The Government Accountability Office has warned that carriers with “chameleon” attributes are about three times more likely to be involved in severe crashes than other new applicants in their analysis.

'Freight Gong Friday' Live Presented by Epay Manager

Because Danielle has been a major force in pushing this into the light, we’re interviewing Danielle Chaffin live today at 8:30 am CST.

If you’ve got questions for her, join us live on LinkedIn or YouTube and send them in the comments section.

TOGETHER WITH CONVOY PLATFORM

Win the fight for quality capacity.

When capacity tightens, every minute counts. The Convoy Platform connects brokers with continuously vetted, reliable carriers to quickly secure the trucks you need—eliminating dead-end calls and giving you the edge in a competitive market.

You set the strategy that's right for your business—from pricing to carrier preferences—while our automated marketplace covers vetting, tracking, document management, payouts, and more, freeing up your team to focus on delivering top-tier service and reliability that your customers demand.

 🌎 Around the Freight Web

🚚 Where Freight Really Moves. This map visualizes the core U.S. freight arteries, with some routes seeing as many as 50,000 trucks daily.

🚨 Another Carrier Hits Chapter 11. Nashville-based Quickway Transportation and its affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after shutting down a Tennessee terminal last year.

📉 Werner’s Q4 Comes Up Short. Werner missed earnings estimates in Q4 as higher costs weighed on results, prompting the carrier to restructure its one-way truckload business in an effort to cut unprofitable freight and improve fleet utilization in 2026.

🚛 Who’s Really Behind the Wheel? Waymo disclosed that parts of its self-driving vehicle operations are remotely supported by human operators based in the Philippines.

📈 Spot Rates Are Moving Early. Truckload spot rates are up roughly $0.61 per mile since last May, an unusual surge for early February and a signal that the freight market may be tightening sooner than expected ahead of the spring shipping season.

🎣 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR CORNER

• New FreightCaviar stickers coming this spring. Every print subscriber will receive a set. A lot is happening behind the scenes. This is the biggest project we’ve ever done. Freight Alley print + film coming in Spring 2026. If you have sticker ideas, send them our way. We might actually make them.
• The FreightCaviar Podcast: We sat down with Ryan Joyce, CEO & Co-Founder at GenLogs, to discuss how they stay ahead of fraud with their camera network, their plans for 2026, and more. Catch the episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

FREIGHT HUMOR