At about 5:35 p.m. on Saturday, April 15, 2023, a tractor-trailer eastbound on Interstate 10 near mile marker 843, by Smith Road and the Goodyear plant in Jefferson County, Texas, failed to control its speed, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety, and set off a chain reaction that reached nine vehicles, including a 2013 Van Hool bus. Brandon Rogers, 48, of Texas City, was riding in the passenger seat of a BMW. He died at the scene. The BMW’s driver, 73, was taken to Memorial Hermann. Interstate 10 was closed for about six hours.
DPS identified the truck driver as Leandre Sime, 38, of Boca Raton, Florida. A Jefferson County grand jury indicted him on June 7, 2023, on a charge of criminally negligent homicide. He was arrested in January 2025, and his lawyer, Ryan Gertz, has said he intends to fight the charge at trial. An indictment is an accusation. Sime is presumed innocent.
Rogers’ family sued in the 60th District Court of Jefferson County, cause No. 23DCCV0514. The defendants include the motor carrier, DMG Consulting & Development Inc., which did business as Goldcoast Logistics Group, USDOT 2190975, and the broker, ArcherHub, which was added to the case on Jan. 31, 2025. ArcherHub denies negligence. The suit alleges who operated the truck and who selected the carrier, and a jury will decide those questions.
Disclosure: I’m a retained expert for the Rogers family in that case. Nothing in this piece comes from its discovery. Every fact here traces to a federal or state record, a public court docket, a news report, or the companies’ and founders’ own published words.
Why this one keeps pulling me back
I’ve written about this crash, this carrier and this broker since March. One side threatened takedowns, and the other pulled a story after a complaint. I’ve also had to correct my own work, in public, more than once. That’s the job. What survived the corrections is worse than what I got wrong, and it’s all sitting in free government databases that anyone selecting a carrier, writing a policy, or cashing a campaign check could have read.
Most carriers that land an out-of-service order fix the problem or close the doors and pay what they owe. Most trucking families that form several companies do it for ordinary reasons: a separate entity for equipment, another for real estate, a brokerage kept apart from the fleet. Lessors and banks sue businesses every day, and a closed docket can mean the bill got paid. No court has charged DMG’s owner, Dragos Sprinceana, with a crime, and no court has found him personally liable for his company’s debts. Giving to campaigns and attending political dinners is legal. Shortening your name is legal.
This story is about what happens when it all stacks up in one place, and who ends up holding the bill.
The man who owned the carrier
Dragos Sprinceana, born in 1979, came to the United States from Romania and built DMG Consulting & Development in the Chicago suburbs under the trade name Goldcoast Logistics Group. Its last MCS-150 before the crash, filed Sept. 29, 2022, reported 350 power units and 334 drivers, with Sprinceana as company officer, at 2130 Point Blvd., Suite 100, in Elgin, Illinois.
A Fresno County, California, court, ruling in June 2024 on a crash lawsuit, described his own deposition this way: he founded DMG, was the only person with management responsibility, and was its sole officer, director, and shareholder, with sole authority over distributions. The same ruling recounted his testimony that the company had no probationary period for new drivers, no logbook monitoring, and no one assigned to watch whether drivers followed federal safety rules. The court found enough to send the plaintiffs’ conscious-disregard and alter ego claims to trial and denied summary judgment. At a 350-truck fleet, there was no board to question, no compliance committee to subpoena and no vice president of safety to depose. There was Dragos.
He lived in Boca Raton, at 17686 Circle Pond Court, ZIP code 33496. Court papers in an equipment lease case in New Mexico, Inland PacLease v. DMG, 1:24-cv-00608, describe months of attempts to serve him: registered addresses that turned out to be virtual offices and executive suites, a fleet manager in Elgin who accepted papers because the owner was often not at the building, and finally court-approved alternative service. Family members filled the registered agent lines on the affiliated companies. Gherghina Sprinceana on GCG Logistics Inc., at virtual offices in Scottsdale and Ajo, Arizona. Gabriela Sprinceana, his wife, on Goldcoast Expediting Inc. in Romeoville and United Global Freight Inc., whose address moved to St. Charles, Illinois, in August 2024. Sprinceana himself on Goldcoast Financial LLC. A real estate company, 1425 Madeline Lane LLC, held the Elgin terminal. Goldcoast Carriers Inc. listed a man named Marian Visan. We’ll come back to him.
What the federal file showed on the day
On April 15, 2023, DMG’s number wasn’t under a federal out-of-service order. Its public FMCSA file that day already carried a closed enforcement case, IL-2021-0097-US1688, settled for $791,640 on May 17, 2022, 11 months before the crash. The violations cited were 49 CFR 383.37(a), knowingly allowing a driver to operate a commercial vehicle without a valid CDL, and 49 CFR 395.3(a)(3)(i), the driving-time limit. Under FMCSA’s definition, knowingly includes what a carrier should reasonably have known. Of the 11,946 closed FMCSA enforcement cases in the dataset I’ve analyzed, it’s the largest single settlement.
FMCSA’s crash file, as I pulled it Oct. 7, lists 150 crashes under DMG’s number from April 2016 to August 2024, with 10 people killed and 86 injured, in states from Maine to Texas. Before April 15, 2023, the count was 143 crashes and nine deaths.
The file has a shape, and the shape matters more than the total. Nineteen crashes in the earliest years. Twenty-five in 2020. Twenty-eight in 2021, the year FMCSA opened its first case. Then 44 in 2022, with three people killed, the year the first case closed with the settlement on the books. The penalty didn’t bend the line. The worst year came after the government had already looked.
The same trucks came back. One plate, 2910364, appears in an Oklahoma crash in May 2021, a month after FMCSA opened that first case. The truck went back on the road. On July 10, 2023, the same plate appears in a fatal crash at an intersection in Mount Holly Springs, Pennsylvania. That was 86 days after Brandon Rogers died, and 48 days before the government put the carrier out of service.
Everything above was in FMCSA’s free public systems before the truck on I-10 moved. On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court held 9-0 in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that federal law doesn’t preempt a negligent selection claim against a freight broker. What a broker’s carrier file on DMG showed before that load moved, and whether a reasonable broker would have tendered it, is now a question a Jefferson County jury gets to ask. I’m not going to answer it in a newspaper.
After Beaumont
The file kept moving. FMCSA’s census shows a compliance review dated May 30, 2023, and an Unsatisfactory rating. The agency placed DMG out of service on Aug. 27, 2023, 134 days after Rogers died. On Sept. 12, 2023, a second, separate out-of-service order followed for failure to pay. A second enforcement case, IL-2023-0120-US1713, closed Oct. 19, 2023, for $97,990. It repeated the CDL and driving-time violations and added 49 CFR 382.215 for using a driver the carrier knew had tested positive for a controlled substance, and 392.2 for operating in violation of state or local law.
The two settlements total $889,630. A settlement in an FMCSA case is an agreement, not a payment. Whether the government collected any of it is the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request I filed. As far as the public record shows, it’s unpaid.
In September 2023, weeks after the first order, the Elgin terminal at 1425 Madeline Lane was sold in a sale-leaseback. The trucks didn’t stop. The crash file shows crashes under DMG’s number as late as August 2024, almost a year after the government ordered them off the road. The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission shows a worker hurt at a Goldcoast facility on Jan. 3, 2024, four months after the order.
Rocky
Early on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019, a tractor-trailer overturned on northbound Interstate 81 near Exit 296 by Strasburg, in Shenandoah County, Virginia. It hit a guardrail, then an embankment, then a bridge pillar. The driver, Chheanrem R. Chhean, 45, died at the scene. Virginia State Police said he was wearing his seat belt. The people who knew him called him Rocky. He drove for Goldcoast. As of March 2026, the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission and the company’s comp carrier told me no death claim had ever been filed for him.
Three years and 189 days separate Rocky’s death on I-81 from Brandon Rogers’ death on I-10. In between, the first federal case opened and closed, the crash count climbed, and the company kept running.
A registered agent is the person who accepts lawsuits, subpoenas, and government notices for a business. Illinois requires every corporation to keep one on file at a real address, so anyone with a claim has somewhere to deliver it. On March 21, 2025, someone filed Illinois Form BCA 5.10/5.20 for DMG Consulting & Development Inc., changing its registered agent from Dragos Sprinceana to Chheanrem Chhean, at 1425 Madeline Lane, the terminal the company had already sold. The form is signed under penalties of perjury. The signature line reads “CHHEANREM CHHEAN, PRESIDENT.”
Rocky had been dead five years and five months. He didn’t sign anything.
On Dec. 23, 2025, DMG filed its annual report. It lists Dragos Sprinceana as president and director, with Wellington and Boca Raton, Florida, addresses, and Aaron Gentry, also of Wellington, as secretary. The registered agent line didn’t change. Somebody filled in the officers and left the dead man in place.
I don’t know who typed that form. The Illinois file shows what it says and when it went in. What it does is plain. A lawsuit served on DMG through its registered agent goes to a man who died in 2019, at a building the company no longer controls. Every injured worker, every lessor, and every family suing the company starts by trying to find someone to hand the papers to. That search costs months and money, and the cost lands on whoever is suing.
The drivers on the paperwork
Rocky isn’t the only driver whose name ended up in the officer slot.
Goldcoast Carriers Inc., USDOT 3014047, lists Marian Visan as its president, secretary, and registered agent, and reported 325 power units on its last MCS-150. When DuPage County deputies went to Visan’s home in Lombard in August 2024 to serve papers for the lessor in the New Mexico case, a roommate told them he was an over-the-road truck driver and wouldn’t be back for two weeks, according to filings in that case. A company reporting more than 300 trucks to the federal government listed as its only officer a man his own roommate described as a working driver. Its Park Ridge office told a process server it no longer accepted service. Goldcoast Carriers’ crash file starts in March 2023 and shows 28 crashes and two deaths through December 2024. It has been out of service since Aug. 15, 2025.
Freight Transportation Group Inc., which does business as FTGI, USDOT 3008326, is the third number. Illinois lists it as file No. 71256391, and from 2017 into 2025 the state’s records named Anderson Taborda as its president, secretary, and sole director, with a registered agent whose professional profile lists him as director of operations at Goldcoast Carriers. Sprinceana’s name wasn’t on it. In a June 2025 media profile, he described Freight Transportation Group as one of his current transportation businesses. On Feb. 12, 2026, he signed an Illinois assumed-name filing as its CEO, under penalties of perjury, putting his name on a company he’d been calling his for at least eight months. FMCSA showed no federal insurance filing for FTGI and a 46.2% vehicle out-of-service rate in March. It has been out of service since April 20, 2026.
Three numbers, connected through the same people on the paperwork, all under federal orders today. Whether the later numbers picked up the equipment DMG could no longer run depends on vehicle records I haven’t finished pulling, and I’m not asserting it.
The money behind the trucks
The lien records show who was financing the fleet, and they show it wasn’t one fleet.
Starting in April 2017, a series of trust vehicles filed UCC financing statements against Sprinceana and his companies, all at 9300 Metcalf Ave. in Overland Park, Kansas, the headquarters of Shamrock Trading Corp., the parent of RTS Financial, one of the largest freight factors in the country: NOTARIUS 117 TRUST in 2017, VOLUNTAS 218 TRUST in 2018, MOTION 120 TRUST in 2020 and QUANTUM 222 TRUST in 2022. Between them, the filings reach Sprinceana, Gabriela and Gherghina Sprinceana, Marian Visan personally, and DMG, Goldcoast Carriers, GCG Logistics, United Global Freight, Goldcoast Expediting, Goldcoast Global Inc., Goldcoast Brokerage and Cargo 24 Inc. A factoring company advances cash against freight bills. These filings show one advancing against Goldcoast’s from 2017 onward, while the crash file grew.
On July 13, 2018, an Illinois UCC filing lists Pony Express Inc., at 638 N. Walnut Lane in Schaumburg, with VOLUNTAS 218 TRUST, the same trust holding liens on the Sprinceana companies, as secured party. FMCSA’s census lists Ioan Ursu as the officer of Pony Express Group Inc., USDOT 3938729, of Wheeling, Illinois. Ursu’s professional profile lists him as Goldcoast’s former chief operating officer. Sharing a factor isn’t a crime, and plenty of carriers in the Chicago suburbs share one. It does mean the two operations sat on the same financing five years before Goldcoast’s number went out of service.
In February 2024, six months after the first out-of-service order, the records show Compass Funding Solutions LLC of Clarendon Hills, Illinois, the factoring arm of Roy Dobrasinovic’s Compass Holding, taking assignment of the RTS lien position across DMG, Goldcoast Carriers, Goldcoast Expediting, United Global Freight, and Sprinceana and Visan personally. On Feb. 11, 2025, 18 months after the order, Goldcoast Carriers filed a new Compass-backed UCC. A financing statement isn’t a judgment and isn’t a default. It shows who held a claim on the trucks after the government told them to stop rolling. I’ve asked Compass whether it advanced money against successor freight bills after August 2023. It hasn’t answered.
One more filing belongs in any honest accounting. Illinois UCC file 029264910, dated Jan. 25, 2023, lists the debtor as Dragos Sprinceana, at the Boca Raton house, and the secured party as Dragos Sprinceana, at a commercial registered agent suite in Glendale, California. He filed a lien against himself. A perfected first-priority lien puts a claim on assets ahead of later judgment creditors. That one went in 80 days before Brandon Rogers died.
The creditors
The federal courts have 13 dockets with DMG, a Goldcoast entity or both as parties. Ten are closed. Three were open as of mid-September: Leaf Capital Funding in the Northern District of Illinois, 1:25-cv-07325, where the docket shows a default judgment on equipment finance; Inland Lease and Rental in New Mexico; and Centennial Bank in the Southern District of Florida, 1:25-cv-21270, an admiralty case filed March 18, 2025, against a vessel, the M/Y Olympus. Sprinceana’s June 2025 profile also touted a construction company he called Olympus Design and Development. The other federal dockets include Constellation NewEnergy over unpaid utilities, Equify Financial on equipment finance, and two cases brought by individual workers, Scott v. DMG and Thompson v. DMG.
The state courts add more. Palmer Leasing sued in Marion County, Indiana, in July 2023. Transport Enterprise Leasing sued in Cook County. Proventure Capital sued DMG, GCG Logistics, Goldcoast Expediting, Goldcoast Carriers and Sprinceana personally in Miami-Dade over a receivables agreement. MR Advance alleged in New York that Sprinceana personally guaranteed $2.7 million. Bank Capital Service documented 13 failed attempts to serve DMG and 11 to serve Sprinceana personally. A third case was closed because he couldn’t be located for service for 120 days. According to Romanian press reports on a July 2025 order by Judge Reid P. Scott, a Florida court examined how a Rolls-Royce ended up in his wife’s name. In October 2024, Sprinceana himself filed suit in Miami-Dade against Jacob Arabo, the jeweler known as Jacob the Jeweler, over two watches he said Arabo took to sell for him and never paid for.
Goldcoast also ran as a broker. Trans Recovery Solutions posted a public collection notice for unpaid freight charges owed by DMG, and Baxter Bailey & Associates lists it in its debtor database. The carriers who hauled for it and didn’t get paid are creditors too. They just don’t have a docket.
The table at Mar-a-Lago
While all of that was on file, Sprinceana was building something else.
In July 2020, he and Gabriela hosted a private gathering in South Florida for then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, according to the Romanian American outlet Tribuna. Federal Election Commission records list Sprinceana as president and CEO of Goldcoast Logistics Group and show contributions from the couple to the Republican National Committee, to Gaetz, and to Warrior Diplomat PAC, the leadership committee of then-Rep. Michael Waltz, from 2020 through 2024. Gabriela is listed in FEC filings as Goldcoast’s safety manager. The Waltz PAC checks include $3,400 on April 21, 2023, and $3,300 on May 6, 2024. The first came 11 months after the $791,640 settlement, and six days after Brandon Rogers died. One Democrat appeared on the list: $1,000 to Andy Thomson on Nov. 3, 2022.
His own published biography says he was with the team that celebrated the 2024 election result at Mar-a-Lago. On Jan. 13, 2025, a week before Waltz became national security adviser, Sprinceana posted that he had met Waltz at Mar-a-Lago and discussed Romania. On Feb. 13, 2025, he posted from Mar-a-Lago at a veterans event with Michael Flynn.
In April 2025, Romania’s then-prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, said he had asked Sprinceana to explain Romania’s situation to the Trump administration, and said it wasn’t an official envoy role, according to Romanian national press. Ciolacu’s government later distanced itself from his public statements. On April 3, 2025, Sprinceana hosted a gala at Mar-a-Lago that he told the newspaper Gândul had about 700 guests, with then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at his table. On Nov. 20, 2025, he posted that he had dined at Mar-a-Lago with Noem and Secret Service Director Sean Curran. That’s the latest the public record puts him at the club. It was 26 months after his career was ordered off the road, with the $889,630 still not shown as paid.
His vehicle for the Romania work wasn’t an FEC committee. Florida’s registry lists United Strategies of America Inc., a not-for-profit he incorporated June 13, 2022, at a Wellington mailbox address he later assigned to DMG. On May 16, 2025, an amended annual report removed his name. A search of the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act database shows no registration for him, for United Strategies or for DMG. Whether any of his activity required one is a legal question this piece doesn’t answer.
None of that is illegal on its face, and none of it shows that any official knew who he was or did anything for him. It shows the order of events. The government found the violations, agreed on a number, and hasn’t shown it collected. The carrier number went out of service. The owner kept his seat at the table. My next installment follows the rest of the people at those tables.
The broker
ArcherHub is a Colorado company. It was formed on Jan. 22, 2014, as Archer Atlantic Global Logistics LLC, at an apartment at 1353 W. 88th Ave. in Thornton, with Darmanchev, Nick as organizer and registered agent, and renamed ArcherHub on March 2, 2020, by Articles of Amendment that list Nick Darmanchev as the filer. In a December 2019 FreightWaves profile, its founder described a Denver digital broker with about 500 customers, a fleet of its own trucks as a backup recovery plan, and an algorithm that “constantly looks for different trucks while the load is in transit.”
It also has a workforce in Moldova. When I reported in April, ArcherHub Moldova was listed on rabota.md and delucru.md, the country’s two main employment portals, as an employer with more than 200 employees in Chisinau, reachable at a +373 Moldovan number and at archerhub.office@gmail.com. Its postings advertised a freight broker agent, account manager, U.S. market operations lead, and after-hours dispatcher, all working American freight from Chisinau. Lucru.md describes the company as American. Both are true: the paper is in Denver, and a large share of the desk is in Chisinau.
The broker’s federal registration, USDOT 2345286, docket MC799497, was granted on Sept. 28, 2012, 16 months before the Colorado company that holds it existed. FMCSA’s census record for it, as I pulled it Oct. 7, lists the legal name ARCHERHUB at a Denver mail drop, 1500 N. Grant St., No. 5499, and lists no company officer, no telephone number, and no MCS-150 date. The MCS-150 is the form every registrant files to tell the government who runs it. The broker in a wrongful-death case has a federal registration that doesn’t name a person.
The paper behind the number keeps changing. FMCSA opened involuntary revocation proceedings against the broker authority five times, in March 2014, February 2019, May 2019, September 2019, and May 2024, and discontinued each after the required filing came back. On June 21, 2023, 67 days after the crash, the broker’s trust fund filing ended, and a Hudson Insurance Co. surety bond replaced it. In June 2024, after another proceeding opened, a new American Alternative Insurance Corp. bond replaced Hudson’s. Brokers change sureties daily for price and paperwork reasons. The number keeps running.
Colorado’s UCC index shows the lenders. BMO Harris Bank filed against Archer Atlantic Global Logistics in January 2019 and continued its filing on Aug. 4, 2023, 16 weeks after Beaumont. The U.S. Small Business Administration filed in September 2020 and continued in July 2025, still under the old company name, five years after the rename.
Two names
The founder has used two surnames on the record, and the record splits along them.
Alvys Inc., the Solana Beach, California, transportation software company that grew out of the brokerage, lists Nick Darman as its chief executive and a director in a March 31, 2026, state filing. It says it has raised $77 million, including a $40 million Series B in September 2025. In July 2020, ArcherHub’s own blog announced the Alvys carrier TMS to its carrier network. That lineage isn’t my inference. It’s their press. In a January 2024 interview with a Moldovan diaspora publication, he introduced himself as “Nick Darman (Nick Darmanchev),” a native of Chisinau who left Moldova in 1996.
In August, Alvys launched Foundry, a system that lets carriers and brokers build AI agents, including ones that monitor a carrier’s federal safety record and dispute entries. Darman told FreightWaves’ Thomas Wasson where the idea came from. He started a trucking company in 2004 while attending Georgia State, he said, and later found that drivers and owner-operators had used his signs, his DOT number and his authority without his consent. “I had no idea until a year later, when the DOT knocked on my door for an audit.” Unauthorized use of a carrier’s number is real, and a tool that catches it is a legitimate product. I’ve built one myself.
FMCSA has the audit. CDI Logistics LLC was formed in Georgia on Nov. 24, 2003, with Nikolay Darmanchev as registered agent at a house in Duluth, and got USDOT 1197492 in January 2004. The census lists Nikolay Darmanchev as its officer. It shows a review dated July 7, 2011, and an Unsatisfactory rating. Its insurer canceled in August, FMCSA revoked its authority Aug. 8, and the agency placed it out of service on Sept. 7, 2011. That order is still in force.
His August account spoke of “my DOT number,” singular. FMCSA’s census lists Nikolay Darmanchev as company officer of four motor carriers holding authority that summer, in four states. CDI in Georgia. Rodos Group LLC in Union Grove, Wisconsin, USDOT 1958313, authorized since 2009 and revoked Sept. 12, 2011, five days after CDI’s order. Archer Atlantic Freight LLC in Chicago, USDOT 2134480, whose authority FMCSA served June 14, 2011, 23 days before CDI’s review, listing nickd@archeratlantic.com. And Akindorf Auto Transport LLC in Aurora, Colorado, USDOT 2164528, formed June 16, 2011, which got its authority July 8, the day after CDI’s review. Earlier numbers under the same name in Pennsylvania date to 2002 and 2003. All of them are inactive today.
In 2017, the carrier side moved to North Carolina. HickoryTranz LLC was formed in Asheville with Nick Darmanchev as registered agent, over a signature reading Nikolay Darmanchev. North Carolina administratively dissolved it on Oct. 11, 2019. A year later, on Oct. 7, 2020, HickoryTranz filed a federal update listing 19 trucks, 19 drivers and Nick Darmanchev as officer. It was the carrier registered under his name when he told FreightWaves in 2019 that ArcherHub kept its own trucks as backup. FMCSA revoked its authority for the last time in June 2022.
A carrier owner can hold several companies for ordinary reasons. Nothing in the census says trucks or drivers moved from one number to another. The pattern regulators call a chameleon carrier is a new company standing up as an old one goes out of service, and whether this sequence is one is a question for FMCSA’s own files. The dates are the dates.
What the two names do to the record is plain. The Unsatisfactory rating, the out-of-service order, the revoked authorities and the crash files stay with Nikolay Darmanchev. The venture capital, the press and the product launch go to Nick Darman. The broker in the Beaumont case carries neither name. An investor checking Nick Darman finds a software CEO. A shipper checking ArcherHub finds an active authority and a bond. A juror reading about Nikolay Darmanchev finds a Georgia carrier that went out of service in 2011. Each is reading an accurate record. None is reading the whole one.
When he was asked
After the April 1 article ran, and after Yahoo picked it up, ArcherHub’s founder reached out to Freightwaves to say it wasn’t true. I answered the way I answer every subject: tell me where it’s wrong, and pick the time. I sent meeting invitations by email three times for dates and times he chose. He canceled all three on the day of the meeting, the day before, or days ahead. The article came down while it waited on his response. He never gave one on the record. Sprinceana’s representatives demanded that Parts One and Two come down. They didn’t. Neither man has answered the questions in this piece. The invitation stands for both.
What the rules already say
FMCSA wrote a rule for this in 2012. Under 49 CFR 386.73, the agency may order a carrier or broker out of service if it, or an officer, employee, agent or representative, operated under a new identity or as an affiliated entity to avoid an order, a penalty or association with a poor compliance record. The same section lets FMCSA merge a current company’s record with its previous incarnation. The public records for every number in this piece show no order under that section, and nothing in them says the agency ever looked.
Where Dalilah’s Law fits
H.R. 5688, Dalilah’s Law, cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee 35-26 on March 18, 2026, and has waited more than 200 days for a floor vote. It reaches the driver. Section 6 moves the consequence for knowingly using a driver without a valid CDL from a fine to the carrier’s registration, the same violation DMG settled twice. That’s a real change and the right one. It still binds the number, not the owner.
Section 7 bars FMCSA from registering brokers based outside the United States and, a year after enactment, bans carriers from using offshore dispatch services. ArcherHub is registered in Colorado, and neither ban reaches a U.S. broker’s own employees in Chisinau.
Nothing in the bill touches a registered agent who died in 2019, a carrier’s officer slot filled by working drivers, an unpaid penalty that stays with a dead number while its owner moves on, a broker registration that names no officer, or a founder whose federal file lists one surname and whose company lists another.
What would close it
None of this needs a new agency. FMCSA can require every MCS-150 to list every person who owns or controls a carrier or broker, every name each has used and every DOT number each has controlled in the past 10 years, under penalty of perjury, and check that list against its own out-of-service, Unsatisfactory and unpaid-penalty records before it grants or keeps authority. It can refuse to keep a registration active that names no officer. It can make an unpaid penalty follow the people who controlled the company that owes it, and it already has 386.73 to merge a record with its previous incarnation. States can reject a registered agent filing that names someone their own vital records list as dead. Campaigns can check a donor’s company against FMCSA’s out-of-service list before they cash the check.
Brokers and shippers can do the cheapest part for free. Before a load is tendered, pull the carrier’s enforcement history, its out-of-service record, and the names on its last MCS-150; ask for every officer’s prior names and prior DOT numbers, and write down that you did. It costs nothing, and it looks a lot better in a deposition than the alternative.
Brandon Rogers
Brandon Rogers was 48. He was riding in the passenger seat on a Saturday evening in Beaumont. Rocky Chhean was 45 and was in the cab of a truck on I-81. The second man’s name is on the corporate file of the company named in the first man’s lawsuit. The settled penalties haven’t been shown as paid. The owner’s last known dinner was at Mar-a-Lago. The broker’s federal file still names nobody.
The record was public before Brandon Rogers died. It’s still public now.