The Eight-Day Shuffle and How Calgary's Most Notorious Chameleon Carrier Rose from the Ashes
The most brazen chameleon carrier transformation in Canadian trucking history happened while the bodies were still being counted.
Eight days. That's how long it took for Calgary's trucking industry to produce what may be the most callous display of regulatory gaming ever documented in North American commercial transportation. While families of the Humboldt Broncos were still identifying their dead children, the owner of the killer truck's company was already orchestrating his reincarnation.
You might be asking, why does a Canadian crash fit into the 30 Days of Why? Canadian and Mexican failures bleed across the border into the US. Chameleon carriers and bad drivers are not exclusive to country.
On April 6, 2018, a westbound semi-trailer driven by Jaskirat Singh Sidhu for Adesh Deol Trucking Ltd. blew through an oversized stop sign at 96 kilometers per hour, T-boning the Humboldt Broncos team bus and killing 16 people, injuring 13 others. The truck belonged to Calgary-based Adesh Deol Trucking, owned by Sukhmander Singh, a company that had been operating for only one year before producing Canada's deadliest highway crash since 1997.
Investigators later discovered that Sidhu had committed 70 violations of federal and provincial trucking regulations in the 11 days leading up to the crash, violations that should have triggered a 72-hour out-of-service order that would have kept him off the roads on April 6.
Alberta Transportation suspended Adesh Deol Trucking's Safety Fitness Certificate on April 10, 2018, four days after the crash which was standard operating procedure for any carrier involved in a fatal crash. The suspension was automatic, not discretionary, and came with a promise of thorough investigation.
While the RCMP was still processing the crash site and families were planning funerals for teenagers, Sukhmander Singh was already three steps ahead of regulators. Quality Logistics, a company registered in 2015 but dormant for years, filed its delinquent annual returns on April 14, eight days after the Humboldt collision, and was officially "revived" by Alberta's corporate registry.
Six days later, on April 20, Quality Logistics changed its corporate address to the same Calgary residence where Adesh Deol Trucking was registered, a house owned jointly by Sukhmander Singh and Kuldeep Randhawa, one of Quality Logistics' directors. Same owner, same address, same business, different name.
By May 2018, less than a month after 16 people died in his company's truck, Singh was back in business. CBC News discovered Singh recruiting drivers on Kijiji for Quality Logistics, using his cell phone number and the first half of his name, "Sukh," in advertisements seeking owner-operators and experienced truck drivers. The ads featured photos of trucks, including one from his suspended Adesh Deol fleet. When confronted by the media, Singh took the ad down within 24 hours, but the damage was done. The chameleon transformation was complete.
The players in this were textbook chameleon carrier operatives. Quality Logistics listed two directors, Kuldeep Randhawa and Baltej Singh Brar, neither of whom had managerial roles in Adesh Deol Trucking. This separation-on-paper allowed Singh to claim he was merely a "staff member" at Quality Logistics, not a manager, technically sidestepping Alberta's prohibition on suspended carrier owners operating new companies.
Alberta Transportation eventually suspended Quality Logistics on May 18, but incredibly lifted that suspension just two weeks later on June 1 after the company "demonstrated compliance" with safety regulations. Quality Logistics was allowed to operate with "conditions" and enhanced monitoring, the regulatory equivalent of a stern warning.
The Sidhu case represents everything wrong with Canada's commercial driver oversight system. Court documents revealed that in the 11 days before the crash, Sidhu had accumulated 70 violations of Hours of Service regulations and logbook requirements. These weren't minor paperwork errors, they were federal safety violations that, under existing law, should have triggered an immediate 72-hour shutdown.
Sidhu had been driving professionally for only one year, received just two weeks of training on his specific vehicle configuration, and was working for a company that had been operating for only 12 months before killing 16 people. He was the poster child for inadequate training, insufficient supervision, and regulatory systems that prioritize commerce over public safety.
Sukhmander Singh eventually pleaded guilty to five safety violations and was fined a total of $5,000, roughly $312.50 per life lost. The judge called it "the end of a very sad tale," apparently missing the irony that Singh had already started a new tale under a different company name.
Sidhu pleaded guilty to 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm, receiving an eight-year prison sentence. He was granted full parole in 2022 and was ordered deported to India in May 2024, though he is appealing that decision.
Stephen Laskowski, president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, told CBC that Quality Logistics appeared to be operating as a "chameleon-like carrier" companies that shift operations under different entities to circumvent safety oversight. This wasn't news to industry insiders; chameleon carriers had been identified as a systemic problem for years.
The Humboldt tragedy finally forced some action. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have implemented mandatory entry-level training for commercial drivers, a requirement that should have existed decades earlier. The RCMP's forensic collision reconstruction report confirmed that Sidhu had multiple opportunities to avoid the crash, passing five warning signs, including the oversized stop sign with flashing lights, but the underlying corporate registration loopholes that allowed Singh's eight-day transformation remain largely unchanged.
Where are they now? Jaskirat Singh Sidhu was ordered deported to India in May 2024 after his permanent resident status was revoked, but he applied to have his status returned on humanitarian grounds. The deportation process could take months or years to finalize, meaning Sidhu remains in Canada while his case winds through immigration courts. He has a Canadian wife and young child with serious heart and lung problems, factors his lawyer argues should prevent deportation.
Sukhmander Singh claimed in 2019 court proceedings that he was "currently unemployed,” not because of his and the company's actions or failures but due to "media attention" following the crash. His Calgary-based trucking company, Adesh Deol Trucking, "no longer exists," according to court records.
The Quality Logistics directors, Kuldeep Randhawa disappeared from public records after their company's brief and controversial existence but not Baltej Singh Brar. He surfaced again in 2024, sentenced to two years in federal prison for defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program of at least $550,000. Operating as "Aspire Tax & Accounting Services Inc." in New York, Brar generated false IRS forms and inflated income figures to maximize PPP loans for clients, including truck drivers and construction workers. The progression from chameleon carrier director to federal fraudster demonstrates the type of individual attracted to regulatory circumvention schemes. It suggests that trucking industry oversight failures often serve as training grounds for more sophisticated financial crimes. No other follow-up investigations or accountability measures for their role in the chameleon transformation have been publicly documented.
The Humboldt Broncos crash was a regulatory systems failure with 16 deaths. A company with a one-year operating history, a driver with 70 recent violations, and an owner who transformed his suspended business into a new corporation while families were still burying their children represents everything broken about commercial vehicle oversight in North America.
The fact that Quality Logistics was allowed to operate, even briefly, after this transparent shell game demonstrates that Canadian transportation authorities learned nothing from the deadliest bus crash in their nation's history. Eight days was all it took to prove that public safety remains secondary to bureaucratic convenience.
Until regulators treat chameleon carrier transformation as the fraud it represents, complete with criminal penalties and personal liability for corporate officers, more families will plan funerals while truck company owners plan their next reincarnation.
Some names deserve to be remembered. Others deserve to be forgotten. Sukhmander Singh and Quality Logistics belong in the second category, along with every other chameleon carrier that treats public safety as a cost of doing business.