Surface Transportation
A“ 60 Minutes” investigation found SuperEgo and affiliated carriers racked up 500 accidents in two years. refrina \ Shutterstock. com data to prioritize carrier“ interventions,” but CSA scoring data does not constitute a safety rating, Burroughs noted.
“ Brokers may review publicly available data as part of their overall due diligence, but that [ SMS ] data is incomplete, can be misleading, and cannot be used to make definitive safety determinations,” he said.
The FMCSA only assigns a safety rating—“ satisfactory,”“ conditional,” or“ unsatisfactory”— after an on-site review, yet more than 90 % of US trucking companies have not been rated, according to the agency, and some have safety ratings that were assigned years or even decades ago. The FMCSA does not have the staff or resources to visit, inspect and provide a safety rating for all motor carriers in the US.
A 2017 review by the National Academy of Sciences found that the CSA safety scoring system is“ structured in a reasonable way” and“ defensible” for identifying higher-risk carriers. But the authors also questioned how precisely those scores reflect crash risk. The federal government has focused intensely on highway safety through its SAFE ROADS initiative, including the high-profile crackdowns on non-domiciled commercial driver’ s licenses( CDLs) and English Language Proficiency( ELP) requirements.
Higher-risk‘ winners’
But some indicators have a clear nexus with highway safety. A carrier with repeated severe violations, such as operating a vehicle with defective brakes or excessive speeding, presents a higher risk of accidents.
Several carriers have been given awards by brokers despite having enough serious violations to trigger FMCSA intervention or be officially deemed“ high risk”.
C. H. Robinson“ Carrier of the Year” awardees MEB Express and Garesp Transportation had more than ten and five violations, respectively, revolving around data from electronic-logging devices( ELDs), which are required for interstate commerce to“ directly combat the primary cause of fatigue-related accidents,” according to the agency. Both are small carriers: MEB owns 80 trucks; Garesp owns 30.
Since last September when the awards were announced, both MEB and Garesp have had to take drivers out of service for failing an ELP exam for the first, according to the FMCSA, and for not possessing a valid CDL or violating restrictions placed on their CDLs, for the second.
The Journal of Commerce contacted C. H. Robinson about its award distribution and the companies that received FMCSA violations. It noted that there were 24 different winners last September, including owner-operators, small carriers, large carriers, and holding companies with affiliated carriers, such as SuperEgo. The broker also said all winners meet the standards set by the FMCSA to legally operate.
In a statement, C. H. Robinson acknowledged it is considering changes in determining how carriers are chosen for recognition, saying,“ As a part of our commitment to continuous improvement, we are reviewing our criteria for future carrier awards.”
Other brokers have also given promotional awards to carriers with high-risk profiles.
Uber Freight, for example, named CloudTrucks a“ Carrier of the Year” last month, even though federal regulators in February flagged the carrier’ s driver fitness record, noting multiple out-of-service violations tied to driver qualifications. The FMCSA officially identified the carrier as“ high-risk” in March 2025.
“ CloudTrucks’ on-road safety data, including driver fitness violations, indicate ongoing safety management concerns,” the FMCSA wrote in February.
Uber Freight discloses the criteria for its“ Carrier of the Year” award on its website; safety was not among them. Uber did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Journal of Commerce.
“ The shippers I talk to just assume you’ re doing everything you can around safety.”
In 2024, Echo Global Logistics awarded a“ Carrier of the Quarter” award to Fortune Transport, despite Fortune triggering federal intervention thresholds for hours-of-service compliance and crash indicators. In a third category— vehicle maintenance— the carrier was only 0.9 percentage point below a formal FMCSA intervention, according to a carrier profile obtained by the Journal of Commerce through a third-party platform. Fortune Transport owns 13 trucks.
Asked about the award to Fortune, Echo said in a statement to the Journal of Commerce it“ maintains a comprehensive carrier onboarding process and operates in compliance with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requirements and all applicable laws and regulations.”
The broader issue for shippers remains: Although they may coincide, operational excellence and highway safety are not always the same thing. Unless the criteria clearly state otherwise, a“ Carrier of the Year” should not be interpreted as a guarantee that every load is being hauled by safe, lowrisk and legally qualified drivers.
Senior Editor William B. Cassidy and Special Correspondent Dan Ronan contributed to this report.
email: ari. ashe @ spglobal. com
44 Journal of Commerce | June 1, 2026 www. joc. com