Freight Day! 👋 Today, we’re diving into the catch-all term 'freight fraud,' as Danielle Chaffin recently discussed in FreightWaves. We couldn’t have explored the growing issue better ourselves.

Once a serious concern, the term has now become a blanket for everything from stolen freight to identity theft and fake pickups. But when everything is labeled 'freight fraud,' nothing stands out. More ahead 👇

💬 More In Freight:

⚫️ Imports Stabilize In June

⚫️ $400K Stolen Fitness Equipment From Cargo Theft: Arrest Made

⚫️ Freight Thefts Surge In Mexico

⚫️ $180M For Truck Parking

Imports Stabilize In June 📊

U.S. container import volumes stabilized in June following a steep drop in May, as businesses waited for clearer direction amid rapidly changing trade policies from the Trump administration, according to Descartes.

“While June saw a modest rebound, policy shifts—especially with China—continue to impact trade flows,” said Jackson Wood, Director of Industry Strategy at Descartes. He noted upcoming deadlines, including the July 9 end of the Liberation Day tariff pause and the August 10 expiration of the U.S.–China trade truce, could further pressure importers to diversify and strengthen supply chains.

Container imports rose 1.8% month-over-month in June, recovering from May’s 9.7% decline. Imports from China ticked up 0.4% to 639,300 TEUs but were still down 28.3% year-over-year. China’s share of U.S. containerized imports dropped to 28.8%—a four-year low—down from 41.5% in February 2022. Meanwhile, Southeast Asian countries saw strong growth: Vietnam (+7.7%), Indonesia (+17.3%), Thailand (+8.6%), and Italy (+9%).

Port performance also shifted, with West Coast ports regaining a 6.7% lead in market share over East and Gulf Coast ports, while transit delays improved—especially at Long Beach and Los Angeles.

Stolen Fitness Equipment 🥷

A Chicago man is facing felony theft charges in connection with a major cargo theft case involving stolen fitness equipment.

Isadore House, 57, was charged with Class 1 Felony Theft after undercover officers from the Cook County Sheriff’s Organized Retail Crime Unit traced items stolen from a Joliet shipment to listings on Facebook Marketplace.

Over several weeks, officers purchased equipment from House at a storefront on West 87th Street and a nearby storage unit. A June 5 search recovered around $400,000 in stolen goods. House was arrested that day and released on June 7 pending trial.

Since launching in 2023, the sheriff’s retail crime unit has recovered over $5 million in stolen merchandise.

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Rose Rocket’s Platform powers the next generation of TMS: TMS.ai. 

TMS.ai is the only AI-native TMS built for the realities of today’s freight market—modular, powerful, and designed to do more with less. Powered by Rose Rocket, the trusted name in logistics tech for over a decade.

What Else Is Moving 🚚

What Is "Freight Fraud"? 🤔

This story was written by Danielle Chaffin as a contributor on FreightWaves. I’d highly recommend giving her a follow on X. She’s been doing deep dives into chameleon carriers and the recent Hope Trans LLC accident.

When everything is freight fraud, nothing is

“BE AFRAID OF FREIGHT FRAUD!”

It’s no surprise when another freight fraud headline lands in our inbox, shows up on LinkedIn, or makes its way into a conversation. 

Freight fraud is a trending topic, but ask what it means, and most answers stop at “stolen freight.” The term has been stretched so far and used so vaguely that it no longer points to anything specific. 

Language shapes how we see problems and how seriously we take them. When a word or phrase gets used too often, too broadly, or too loosely, it begins to lose its meaning. Linguists call this semantic bleaching. It’s the phenomenon that turned the word “literally” into “kind of,” and made “love” something we say about a phone case or a cup of coffee. 

This is precisely what the freight industry has done to “freight fraud.” We’ve used the term so often, in so many contexts, that it no longer means anything. It is a catch-all for every type of criminal or deceptive activity. Everything from double-brokering and identity theft to fake pickups, forged certificates of insurance, and compromised email accounts.

What began as a real warning is now just another buzzword, repeated so often it’s lost all impact. Urgent, dangerous issues have been reduced to marketing campaigns. We’ve boiled deeply rooted problems into soundbites, hashtags, and oversimplified solutions.

The danger? When everything is “freight fraud,” nothing is. 

Without clear definitions, we chase our tails, mislabel threats, and solve nothing. Everyone talks about stolen freight, but the real danger keeps rolling—fraudulent carriers running for cheap rates, cutting corners, and never intending to play by the rules.

In the rush to spotlight stolen loads, we’ve overlooked the bigger problem: bad carriers hiding in plain sight. These aren’t one-time thieves, and in many cases, they’re not thieves at all. They’re repeat offenders who built fraud into their business model. They steal identities, ignore safety regulations, operate under misrepresented authority, and restart the same operation under a new name, again and again.

Freight fraud isn’t one problem with one fix. If it were, one of the dozens of vetting tools on the market would’ve already solved it. Freight fraud is a system built on distinct, traceable, and often preventable tactics. But we’ve buried those tactics in vetting tools with green checks and red Xs, mistaking box-checking for credibility.

If we want to fix this, we must start calling things by their names. This isn’t theory; these aren’t isolated events. These are the go-to methods fraudulent carriers use to stay in business, dodge accountability, and move freight they should never touch.

Using Facebook to Buy Authorities & Hide The Past

Fraudulent carriers buy existing USDOT numbers, often through Facebook groups or online forums, and change the contact information to assume the identity. They operate under that authority without completing proper registration, usually to hide violations and revoked authority from their other USDOTs. 

Yes, buying an entire business entity can be legal. But in these cases, the speed, anonymity, and lack of regulatory compliance suggest that most of these deals are not legitimate.

By taking over an older USDOT number, the purchasers appear more established than they are. That “age” helps them bypass basic vetting filters, like minimum time in operation.

This practice violates FMCSA rules. USDOT numbers are tied to a specific business name and tax ID. A change in ownership requires the new owner to apply for a new USDOT number, not simply swap identities.

Chameleon Carriers

These carriers cycle through USDOT numbers to dodge audits, erase their history, bypass vetting tools, and keep hauling freight. “Chameleon” and “ghost” carriers hide behind layers of LLCs and fake names, making it nearly impossible to trace who’s actually behind the wheel.

On load boards and vetting platforms, they look clean. They check all the boxes. Good authority age, a few violations; everything is in order. But behind the scenes, drivers are swapping placards and taping up a different USDOT from the folder in the cab. 

The illusion of legitimacy hides serious risks, and regulators, brokers, and shippers struggle to keep up.

Stolen Load Board Credentials

Fraudulent carriers steal login credentials from legitimate carriers, usually through phishing or weak passwords, and post fake capacity using their USDOT number. Brokers see a valid USDOT number and assign the load, not realizing they’re certainly not dealing with who they think they are. 

We want to automate everything, but automation makes this so much worse. If the carrier profile checks all the boxes, the system automatically tenders the load to the carrier. No questions asked. No human review required. No idea who is on the other end.

Compromised Email Accounts

Fraudulent carriers gain access to a legitimate carrier’s email account and assume the identity. Same domain, same signature, and same USDOT number. They communicate directly with brokers and shippers to book loads. Everything looks normal. But it’s not the real carrier behind the screen. 

Manipulated Documents 

Fraudulent carriers forge shipment documents to get paid. They alter piece counts, forge signatures, or create fake proof of delivery, often submitting the paperwork before anyone notices the load is missing or the order is incomplete.

Double-brokering

Double-brokering is the act of accepting a load and handing it off to another carrier, without the shipper’s or broker’s knowledge or consent. It introduces significant risk, hides the actual carrier, and complicates accountability when things go wrong.

Fraudulent carriers use double-brokering to mask ineligibility, move loads under someone else’s identity, or siphon profit from both ends.

Telling shippers and brokers to “vet your carriers carefully” is like handing out umbrellas in a hurricane. It sounds helpful, but it completely misses the real threat. 

That advice won’t stop a truck carrying a binder full of USDOT numbers, ready to slap on a new one at the next truck stop. Frankly, this kind of guidance is dangerous. 

Not all freight fraud is the same. A forged POD isn’t a phishing attack. A driver without a CDL isn’t a fake email. Changing an address on a Facebook-purchased USDOT number isn’t the same as an owner/operator moving homes. But today, we lump them all together under one vague label: “freight fraud.” 

Until we expose the specific criminal behaviors, we can’t address their root causes. Vague cries like, “PLEASE STOP FREIGHT FRAUD!” won’t push regulators to act. 

Let’s be clear: until the USDOT registration and update process is cleaned up, no one is truly being proactive. We’re all reacting to a system that has operated with minimal enforcement, allowing fraud to thrive for years. The flashy claims about “proactive approaches” and “next-gen vetting” mean very little when the foundation itself is flawed.

This article isn’t offering solutions. It’s a call for honesty. We need to stop hiding behind buzzwords and start naming the problems. This means genuine conversations, better enforcement, and education grounded in reality, not just compliance checklists.

All that said, there’s hope. The recent conversation between Timothy Dooner and Secretary Sean Duffy, and the executive order “Enforcing Commonsense Rules of the Road for America’s Truck Drivers,” signals that the right people are finally paying attention. If we stay focused on the real problems, not just the marketing language around them, we can start to turn the corner. 

Change won’t happen overnight, but it can happen.

It starts here, by calling suspicious behavior what it really is, by naming the tactics, not just the outcome. It means sharing what we know, educating others, and refusing to rely on vague advice or a single source of truth for vetting and compliance. It means helping each other keep the good carriers in and stop giving freight to the ones who never belonged on the road.

FREIGHT SNIPPETS ✂️

🚨 Freight Thefts Surge In Mexico | On May 9, thieves posing as police hijacked a truck carrying $420,000 worth of sound equipment for the famed cumbia band Los Angeles Azules along the Mexico-Puebla highway. The unarmed driver and passenger were left on the roadside after a warning shot was fired. The gear was later recovered after the case drew national attention, prompting intervention by Mexico’s National Guard. But most cargo theft victims aren’t so lucky. Theft attempts in Mexico now occur every 50 minutes, with over 24,000 incidents in 2024, according to Overhaul. Read more.

🍅 Mexico Races To Save Tomato Deal | Mexican officials are in talks with the Trump administration and U.S. growers to avoid the collapse of the Tomato Suspension Agreement, which currently allows duty-free tomato exports to the U.S. The U.S. plans to withdraw from the agreement on July 14, with the Commerce Department proposing tariffs of 17–21% on Mexican tomatoes. Read more.

🚔 Driver On The Run: Caught | Pennsylvania State Police have arrested a truck driver who evaded capture for 111 days after fleeing on foot into the woods. On March 7, 46-year-old Lee Dubois was spotted by police in Schuylkill County operating a semi and wanted on an active felony warrant for aggravated assault by motor vehicle. When officers attempted a traffic stop, Dubois fled, eventually driving down a dirt road where his truck got stuck. He then ran into the woods and disappeared. After months on the run, Dubois was taken into custody on June 26. Read more.

TOGETHER WITH CARRIERSOURCE.

MB Trucking: Carrier Review Of The Week 🏆

This week, we spotlight MB Trucking, a reliable provider based in Towanda, PA, operating since 2018. Known for its solid clientele and a 99% overall safety score, MB Trucking ensures that your freight is always secure with the use of Samsara tracking and Elogs, providing real-time monitoring of trucks and trailers. 

With a fleet of 5 units, they specialize in dry van, flatbed, and power-only services. MB Trucking has earned a 4.9/5 rating on CarrierSource from 12 reviews. 

DOT Number: 1447495
Headquarters: Towanda, PA
Fleet Size: 5

CarrierSource Profile Link

⏯️ Tariff Pause Extended | The Trump administration extended its 90-day pause on “reciprocal” tariffs but warned trade partners that higher import duties will begin August 1. Countries like Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia face 25% tariffs, while others like Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia will see rates as high as 40%. Trump’s baseline 10% tariff remains in effect, along with 25% on vehicles and parts. Read more.

💵 Driver Wins $50K | A trucker on an overnight stop in Maryland hit a $50,000 lottery win with a $5 ticket. Clayton Webb, who had just finished a delivery in Silver Spring, bought the ticket at a Wawa in College Park on July 1. He claimed the prize the next day and plans to use part of it to fix the engine on his yard tractor back home in North Carolina. Read more.

🅿️ $180M For Truck Parking | Florida will add 917 truck parking spots along I-4 in Osceola, Seminole, and Volusia counties, funded by a $180 million federal grant. The money, announced again by the Trump administration in June, was originally awarded in January 2024 through the INFRA program under the Biden administration. Florida DOT says the funding covers four projects now in the design phase. The parking expansion is part of a broader $275 million federal effort to improve truck parking nationwide. Read more.

MEME OF THE DAY 😂