Sponsors (20)
Official title: To direct the Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to conduct a study on chameleon carriers in the United States and plan, develop, and test an advanced automation tool to help enforcement personnel detect chameleon carrier applications under the registration process of the Department of Transportation, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 12, 2026 by Harriet Hageman · Last progress February 12, 2026
The bill strengthens detection, enforcement, and oversight to keep fraudulent or high‑risk trucking operations off the road and improve safety, but it raises risks of false positives, added costs and compliance burdens for legitimate carriers, privacy concerns, and potential legal uncertainty.
Transportation workers and the general public: automated detection tools, faster interagency data‑sharing, and improved registration/data fields reduce the chance that high‑risk or fraudulent 'chameleon' carriers operate, lowering crash risk and improving road safety.
Federal, state, and local regulators and policymakers: a GAO study with state‑level prevalence and crash estimates provides evidence for targeted enforcement and informed policy decisions.
Regulators and the public: clearer authority and classification of evasion as unlawful gives regulators stronger tools to track, block, and hold accountable carriers that try to evade safety orders, strengthening freight‑sector oversight.
Small carriers, applicants, and small‑business owners: automated flags, expanded enforcement, or new compliance checks could generate false positives, delays, and substantial administrative burdens or costs for legitimate operators.
Small carriers and affiliated businesses: a broad or vague definition of 'chameleon carrier' could subject more firms to liability and regulatory scrutiny, increasing legal risk and compliance obligations.
Applicants and taxpayers: interagency data‑sharing and automated evidence compilation raise privacy and data‑use risks if safeguards, limits, or oversight are insufficient.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Requires a GAO study of "chameleon carriers" and orders FMCSA to build and deploy an automated detection tool, with appeals, IG audit, and interagency sharing.
Requires the Government Accountability Office to study so-called “chameleon carriers” and produce a national and state-level estimate of their prevalence, crash and injury impacts, evasion methods, and legislative recommendations within one year. Directs the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to design, test, and deploy an automated detection tool within one year to help FMCSA staff identify registration applications from carriers trying to evade enforcement, with appeals procedures, IG audit requirements, data-privacy limits, and interagency sharing authorities.