What are the *exact* authorities to report these MC/DOT frauds?

Hi. My questions are sincere, so please do not think I am a troll.

I do know that in life sometimes we have to do a few shady things to survive, whether it be stealing a protein bar after a week of hunger or slurping out gas from a farm truck-wagon when stuck in a deserted town at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night during your 800 mile trip to visit aunt Jemima. But sometimes, when shady activities operate on a business scale with multiple employees, it does more harm than any good. Worse, is when that business forces an employee to do something shady.

I worked for a trucking 'company' over the length of a summer. This business has operated for about 4 years. A close friend asked me to work, but primarily because of my technical skills. In short, I outfitted an entire office with multiple computers--each with 2-4 screens--, laser printers, industrial scanners, VOIP phones, and backup systems - all networked and accessible remotely. Heck, I even created a toll-free number for the business, business cards, and a website.

But while working there, as a dispatcher searching for loads on DAT and Truckstop, I started noticing shady stuff. Keep in mind, I didn't know a jack thing about the trucking business. I self-taught myself searching for loads through reading forums and watching Truckstop/DAT training videos. That was relatively easy for me, just sit and monitor regions on different screens and rapidly calling available loads to negotiate a good paying catch. One of the first things I noticed is the massive amounts of prior MC numbers that they operated under. As I learned, it appears that the 'owner' purchased MC certificate/authorizations from owners who were selling them. After the 'owner' exploited the MC number (lots of DOT violations, companies making DOT complaints, drivers without CDLs, etc. etc.) that resulted in companies not doing business again with that MC, he would simply dump it and start operating under another. This was the first of many shady things. It was strange that I had to keep re-establishing new carrier packets with same companies, and verbally give the same brokers strange excuses explaining new MC company.

Oh..this particular company that I worked for, operates about 27 trucks, primarily flatbeds. Some of the drivers are company drivers, and some of the drivers own their own trucks and pay for our dispatching service. Some drivers become slaves to the owner: he buys used trucks at auction sites in western states and sells them to the driver at 6x the price, placing the driver under some 'mortgage' that will take them a while to pay off. This doesn't account for all the truck engine failures the poor drivers have to pay for, due to them being used, but this is another story on its own. It is only later that I realized that it is illegal to dispatch a truck under your MC that actually has their own MC on the trucks door. Well, technically I don't really understand if this is really illegal or not, but I do know many loads that I dispatched were rejected at the locations because the MC numbers on their doors was totally different than the MC number it was booked under. Some brokers never used us again because of this.

Then came the permit stuff. As I progressed in becoming a dispatch master, I learned that some loads are unique. Some are really high, some are really wide, some are really heavy, some are dangerous (chemicals, gases, etc.), and some require escorts. Not matter the uniqueness, they practically all needed some type of permit. Many times, multiple permits were needed if the load traveled across multiple states. Some permits were cheap, like $15, some were pricey depended on weight per axle, etc. Sometimes the cheap ones added up a lot if you crossed 13 states. And most importantly, you couldn't get a load moving on the road unless you had the permits. Thus, the owner did shady stuff. He would ask me to manipulate an existing permit with false information, which then would be generated into a PDF and forwarded to the broker and driver. Sometimes, if the actually permit for a load would cost $185 because of weight, he would have dispatchers lie about the weight to buy a legitimate permit at $20. We would then manipulate that legitimate $20 permit to reflect the weight values of a higher cost permit. Sometimes, old permits from months old loads would be used and manipulated via photoshop to reflect current date, truck information, etc. In the beginning, he did this old-fashioned...he would use something like MS paint, print, cut-out letters from other documents and glue them on, scan, and use. I really didn't think much of it when I started, but I told him I could eliminate all of those steps in Adobe Photoshop. When he saw that his 2-hour process was done in 5 minutes, I was slowly and aggressively pushed into doing more and more. After the first few, I knew something was just odd. I created a trap for myself.

Sometimes, there were chemical loads. The brokers would stress we need to be hazmat and all that other stuff. The owner always had large hazmat stickers with codes that was placed on the side of loads that the drivers refuse to do without them (they didn't know they were fake). Sometimes, we would lie to brokers and simply take chemicals enclosed under tarps, with the drivers driving carefully in hopes they won't get stop by DOT or other officials.

I still don't know what are the actual regulations of an MC number. If I understand correctly, you can only operate ONE truck under your MC number, unless you registered for a fleet. Yet, this company operates 20+ trucks and growing. There were so many MC numbers that were registered under different names and addresses that I could not keep track. Likewise, insurances for the MC also have separate different entities. Heck, that's another thing, sometimes the company would manipulate insurances for the actual trucks. The owner also had these large magnetic mats he asked drivers to place over their doors when entering specific places. For example, if we dispatched a truck to enter a military base to pickup something military and they did all sorts of security inspections (like matching MC of carrier from form to truck), the driver would simply throw on a magnetic mat over door to hide his own MC and to give the illusion that the truck was a legitimate truck of our company.

One of the biggest things that I discovered is that the IRS sent the owner a letter of owing them about 200,000$ in taxes from a former MC company. The owner gave me a half-assed story, but in reality he simply dumped that MC and started anew under a new MC. This was many moons ago and a problem he personally keeps facing with new MCs.

This part is a personal observation and heavily opinionated. I observed that this owner would tax his drivers mental physiques. If the driver wasn't on the road making money, the owner wasn't making money. This usually results in a mixed mess. Drivers are constantly on roads, fatigued, not seeing family, yet the owner with great calculation would exploit them by keeping them farther and farther away from their own home states. Trucking is already hard work, but messing with someone psychologically is another. You guessed it, this resulted in a lot of doctored driver logs. Sometimes, they would just crash out at random stops for sleep. This led to many 'white lies' to brokers about current locations of their loads: primary stories were traffic and fictitious traffic accident that clogged up the road. A few drivers would become mad, literally leaving the truck/load wherever it was at, and never return to the company again.

Then comes the super shady stuff. I quietly observed that there are a rare few "select" drivers that would work direct under owner. These drivers had unique road trip patterns, typically from Colorado/Texas direct to Northeast states. I personally observed on two occasions that drivers actually imported drugs (solely marijuana, from my experience), hidden in the middle under legitimate loads. The first time it was 8 large concrete block sized bags of marijuana, and the 2nd time I simply noticed a lot..after a forklit removed a few pallets of brick material, I saw a pallet deep inside the cargo that had stacks of marijuana bags. At first I didn't care, since I am an advocate to legalize marijuana and the driver said that was for his personal use, but the 2nd time I stopped rationalizing that such quantities could be for "personal" use. What scared me a bit is that I would be thrown in prison due to some unforeseen raid. I never saw this stuff again, but this is primarily due to me staying away from the truck-yard after hours sharing a beer with the crew.

I am quite surprised how easy it is to get an MC number and build a business. What makes me upset about this whole experience is that the owner is an undocumented foreigner...I don't have anything against that, but what burned me is that he is an undocumented foreigner capitalizing on other undocumented foreigners. He would 'enslave' undocumented foreigners under him as mechanics, drivers, etc..typically getting them hook in verbal contracts of buying used equipment that they will pay off once they start driving for him. He would have no mercy for them. If he rented them a flatbed and the driver gets pulled over and ticketed because the owner forget to register the flatbed, he would make that driver eat the ticket. If he kept a driver on the road for 6 weeks and they finally came home to their family, he would try to shave off monies from their paychecks, which would often bounce. This is what ultimately did it for me...treating your own people like slaves and pawns (see part 2 of post below..I can only type so much in one thread)..

 

part 2:

There are other minor stuff I haven't covered, like the owner holding hostage the truck containers of another business because of payment issues. To summarize, this owner operates under multiple MCs, manipulates DOT permits, manipulates truck insurances, practices fraud tactics by placing magnetic mats over a trucks MD number, keeps his employees like living hostages, uses bad business practices, does not pay taxes, doctors driver logs, and much more. You might think I'm a troll and making this up, but I assure you that I am not. You might think how can he possibly get away with this. Sometimes, a rare few times, a driver does get pulled over and it is discovered that they are overweight without permits, don't have a CDL, or other shady stuff. But the cost is nothing compared to the gains. For example, a driver once got stopped for having no CDL, trailer registration was funny, and something else I can't remember. DOT had the trailer/truck impounded and gave him a $5,000 fine. $5,000 is peanuts compared to the accrued weekly generated income of 20+ trucks...and the owner has his own equipment that he uses to pickup impounded trucks. The only true penalty is the amount of points accumulated under the MC, which makes brokers not do business with you again until you increase your score. This is easily resolved by the owner getting a new MC number and using existing trucks by patching them with new magnetic mats that give the illusion they are owned by the new MC.

I'm sure there are right authorities to report this to that will actually listen. But I do not know where to begin. Please help.