CHAMELEON CARRIERS
When a trucking company accumulates serious safety violations — crashes, failed inspections, hours-of-service violations — it risks being shut down by the FMCSA. Some operators respond by dissolving the company and reincorporating under a new name, new DOT number, and sometimes a new owner of record. They carry the same trucks, the same drivers, and the same unsafe practices, but start with a clean safety record.
This is not a gray area. Using multiple DOT numbers to evade a negative compliance history is unlawful under federal law. Yet it has been widespread and difficult to detect — until now.
In February 2026, the FMCSA announced plans to strengthen enforcement against chameleon carriers, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stating these bad actors have caused deadly accidents. CoopCheck was built to support that effort with public data.
WHERE THE DATA COMES FROM
CoopCheck is built on the FMCSA CENSUS1 dataset — the federal government's official registry of all active and inactive motor carriers operating in the United States. This dataset is updated monthly by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and is public record.
Our current dataset covers 2.06 million carrier registrations from the January 2025 FMCSA release, refreshed weekly. Each record includes the carrier's legal name, DBA name, physical address, phone number, DOT number, fleet size, and operational status.
Cluster analysis is performed against this dataset using shared contact information — phone numbers and physical addresses — as the primary signals of related carrier activity.
HOW WE DETECT CLUSTERS
CoopCheck identifies carrier clusters — groups of two or more registered carriers that share the same phone number or physical address. This shared-contact methodology is the same signal the FMCSA's own registration system uses to flag potential chameleon activity, but we surface it publicly and in real time.
A cluster does not prove fraud. Legitimate businesses can share addresses (office buildings, freight terminals) or phone numbers (brokerages, fleet management companies). What a cluster does is flag a pattern worthy of closer scrutiny — especially when combined with inactive DOT status, high carrier counts at a single address, or a history of safety violations.
Risk levels are assigned based on the number of carriers sharing a contact point:
| Risk Level | Signal | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| CRITICAL | 10+ carriers sharing a phone or address | Unusually high concentration. Warrants immediate review by investigators. |
| HIGH | 5–9 carriers | Elevated pattern. May indicate serial reincorporation or shared management. |
| MEDIUM | 2–4 carriers | Worth noting. Could be legitimate or could indicate early-stage reincorporation. |
| CLEAR | No cluster detected | No shared contact signals found. Does not mean the carrier is safe — only that this pattern was not detected. |
WHAT COOPCHECK IS NOT
CoopCheck flags patterns. It does not make legal determinations. A CRITICAL risk rating means a carrier shares contact information with many others — not that it has been found guilty of fraud, safety violations, or any wrongdoing.
A CLEAR rating does not mean a carrier is safe to hire or work with. It means our detection method found no cluster signal. Chameleon operators who change both address and phone number will not appear in our clusters.
Our dataset reflects FMCSA registration data and is only as accurate as that source. Carriers may have updated contact information that has not yet propagated to the federal registry.
CoopCheck is intended as a research and investigation tool, not as the sole basis for any legal, hiring, or contracting decision.
INDUSTRY COVERAGE
The chameleon carrier problem has received growing attention from regulators, journalists, and the freight industry. Below are key resources for understanding the issue.