A new lawsuit accuses mega-brokers TQL and C.H. Robinson of racketeering and working with illegal carriers in the Super Ego network to price decent haulers out of freight.
- A lawsuit brought by six motor carriers says TQL and C.H. Robinson defrauded customers by knowingly using forced labor.
- Confidential witnesses in the carriers’ complaint said they drove for Super Ego-affiliated fleets, often in excess of hours of service regs, delivering loads on which C.H. Robinson named itself as the carrier.
- Overdrive reporting links one of the Super Ego-linked fleets to documented ELD cheating.
- C.H. Robinson vigorously denies the claims in the complaint. TQL couldn’t be reached for comment.
- Legal sources say the complaint faces serious obstacles. But if it reaches the “discovery” phase, it could be damaging for the brokers.
The complaint was filed by six motor carriers in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Texas, Marshall Division. Carriers Stevens Trucking Co.; Western Flyer Express, LLC; D&M Carriers, LLC d/b/a Freymiller Trucking; IWX Motor Freight, LLC; Christenson Transportation Inc.; and E.O.S. Inc. brought the complaint.
The civil complaint seeks to use a type of legal action typically leveraged against organized crime, alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and calling out the brokers’ ties to the Super Ego network of “chameleon carriers.”
It begins by stating the “decline of lawful asset-based trucking operations in the United States” is “driven by a coordinated relationship” between the brokers and “illegal carriers.”
Dorothy Capers, Chief Legal Officer for C.H. Robinson, told Overdrive the company rejects “the allegations in this civil lawsuit, its false characterization of C.H. Robinson and our business practices, and its fundamental inaccuracies about how the freight market actually works.”
Among those inaccuracies, according to Capers, is the “illegal” description for carriers used by C.H. Robinson.
“All the carriers we work with are authorized by the federal government, plus meet additional safety standards and higher levels of insurance than legally required,” said Capers. “Running a responsible company is foundational to who we are, and serving our two-sided marketplace of shippers and carriers well is why we’ve been successful for 120 years.”
The complaint defines illegal carriers as “fly-by-night companies registered under fake addresses who are severely underinsured; recruit and exploit foreign drivers through forced labor; disregard safety regulations; falsify logbooks; and cause a disproportionately high number of crashes and fatalities on U.S. roads and highways.”
While the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has made moves to crack down on improper principal places of business, non-citizen drivers, and hackable ELDs, plenty of federally authorized carriers continue to haul with bad addresses, foreign drivers, and falsifiable logbooks.
[Related: Roadcheck: Inspectors ‘behind the curve’ on new breed of ELD cheats]
The carriers say they lost lucrative freight opportunities hauling for shippers that TQL and C.H. Robinson undercut them on.
According to the complaint, “Bruce Johnson,” formerly of C.H. Robinson as “head of Carrier Services, testified in a sworn deposition on January 22, 2026, C.H. Robinson would secure customer loads by bidding below the bids of asset-based carriers. After winning the bid, CH Robinson would then ‘source’ Illegal Carriers through the use of its Carrier Representatives and its proprietary load board to tender the loads” to Super Ego and other carriers.
Johnson also testified, according to the complaint, that C.H. Robinson knew Super Ego lacked motor carrier authority, operated multiple “subsidiaries,” and was and is based in Serbia.
A source at C.H. Robinson refuted that, saying the characterization of Johnson’s deposition in the complaint was “entirely false, and nothing like that appears in the deposition.”
After the 60 Minutes episode exposing Super Ego’s chameleon carrier network aired in April, Super Ego denied it was a motor carrier at all. C.H. Robinson awarded Super Ego a 2025 Carrier of the Year award, and TQL named Super Ego-linked carriers Sam Express and Tutash Express as “Elite Carriers.”
[Related: C.H. Robinson, Super Ego chalk up ‘chameleon carrier’ outrage to a big misunderstanding]
A C.H. Robinson spokesperson defended Super Ego’s subsidiary carriers as federally authorized.
“Super Ego is a holding company. The specific trucking companies under their umbrella that we worked with each had individual operating authority from the U.S. government,” the spokesperson said. “Like all the carriers we work with, they were each in good standing with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration at the time we worked with them. Super Ego carriers are no longer part of our network.”
The complaint also cites a statistic from Overdrive sister Fusable company Central Analysis Bureau, the originator of the “chameleon carrier” moniker: “chameleons” are four times as likely to be involved in a crash.
Witnesses allege HOS cheating, brokers acting as carriers
CAB’s analysis of Super Ego’s carrier network helped map out the web of companies for CBS. Overdrive further explored those carriers and found it included some of the worst fleets in trucking.
Among them was Trytime Transport, with absolutely horrific safety scores in the bottom 0.03% of all registered carriers.
The carriers’ complaint cites six confidential witnesses (CWs) as describing their time hauling for Trytime and other Super Ego affiliates.
“These CWs tell a strikingly similar story. The carriers they drove for switched DOT numbers and names regularly; required drivers to drive beyond federal hours-of-service limits; manipulated electronic logging devices; paid drivers astonishingly low wages; and threatened them with penalties or further debt when they objected.”
Overdrive, using CAB’s system, found evidence supporting this. Trytime shares a large number of trucks with another fleet, Prime Route, where Overdrive found video evidence and testimony from a driver showing ELD cheating.
CAB’s analysis found Prime Route shared 33 VINs recorded during roadside inspections, representing 44% of the 75 units it reports, with Trytime.
The CWs in the complaint also said they saw C.H. Robinson’s name listed as the carrier on loads they hauled for the Super Ego-affiliated carriers.
Defendants TQL and C.H. Robinson “list themselves as ‘carriers’ on the bills of lading, instead of the Illegal Carrier entities,” the complaint states.
The complaint states drivers in inspections with TQL listed as the carrier “are around three times more likely to receive an” out-of-service violation.
When litigation happens after a big crash, big brokers commonly deny acting as carriers.
By having it both ways in this case, according to the complaint, TQL and C.H. Robinson avoid accidents impacting their safety scores and use those clean records to book more freight and undercut good carriers.
C.H. Robinson and TQL push the ‘driver shortage,’ knowingly book with ‘illegal carriers’
The complaint further goes after C.H. Robinson’s Navisphere load board and TQL’s Carrier Dashboard, saying that’s where the freight gets unloaded on illegal carriers.
“Bidding is a farce on these platforms,” the complaint writes. “TQL and C.H. Robinson set the price and illegal carriers accept these bargain basement bids often with no questions asked.”
The complaint claims TQL and C.H. Robinson knowingly benefited from “forced labor” by booking dirt-cheap freight. Citing the American Transportation Research Institute’s average trucking costs, the complaint says both brokers routinely booked freight for rates well below benchmarks.
TQL, for example, was booking $1.60/mile loads while at C.H. Robinson, after “illegal surcharges” Super Ego-affiliated carriers take out of driver pay, “the driver may make as little as $0.10 per mile, which equates to only $3 an hour for a twenty-hour shift.”
By booking such cheap freight to these “illegal carriers,” the complaint alleges both brokers “committed wire fraud” and defrauded their shipper customers.
C.H. Robinson’s Dorothy Capers refuted the complaint’s characterization of the company and the industry as a whole.
“This lawsuit is wrong about some of the most basic elements of the industry,” she said. “No freight broker sets rates. The marketplace does. When demand for carriers is high and supply is low, carriers command higher rates. When demand is low and the supply of carriers is high, shippers command lower rates. This is reflected in the rate forecasts we publish monthly and, as a publicly traded company, we report our margins quarterly.”
Not only does the complaint look into the age-old question of “who is hauling all the cheap freight,” but it goes after the authors of the “driver shortage” narrative.
[Related: Did DOT Secretary Duffy just kill trucking’s ‘driver shortage’ narrative once and for all?]
TQL and C.H. Robinson have both publicly stated there’s a driver shortage at various times, and the complaint says illegal carriers “exploiting foreign labor sources began to crop up to meet Defendants’ ‘need’ for cheaper drivers. This is when the decline of the great American trucking company began.”
Capers refuted that and said it’s “a myth” that brokers simply find the cheapest carrier. “The choice of a carrier for any shipment rides on a multitude of factors. Our process takes into account carrier proximity, size, equipment, certifications, and customer requirements ranging from sustainability to service levels,” she said.
Do the carriers stand a chance of actually winning the case against TQL and C.H. Robinson?
Transportation lawyer Dan Artaev said the motor carriers alleging the brokers conspired to run an organized criminal enterprise have a high burden of proof.
“Basically you have to show that TQL and C.H. Robinson conspired to run an organized criminal enterprise,” he said. “But the way it reads, is that they used a network of illegal carriers to cut costs and price the plaintiff carriers out of the market.”
Overall, he’s not sure if it “rises to the level of federal racketeering RICO is geared towards.”
Additionally, there’s a question of if the carriers have standing to sue in this instance.
“A plaintiff in a lawsuit has to have suffered some sort of direct harm from a defendant’s wrong,” he said. “Here, it appears that the plaintiffs are alleging unfair competition at most.”
TQL and C.H. Robinson could make a motion to have the complaint dismissed, and if it was, it would essentially disappear.
But the plaintiffs demand a jury trial, so if the case doesn’t get dismissed and it heads towards trial, they would go through discovery. Through that process, plaintiffs could subpoena TQL and C.H. Robinson for their records of communication with the Super Ego-related fleets.
That discovery alone could prove damaging.
However, C.H. Robinson indicated it was ready for the legal challenge.
“We look forward to defending ourselves vigorously and pursuing counterclaims supported by real facts and the law,” concluded Capers.
