The Columbus corridor of Medicaid millionaires and chameleon carriers

Five of those designations are variants of Suite 300: Suite 300, Suite 300F, Unit 300P, Unit 300 U, and Suite 300D. Five separate carrier registrations referencing different versions of the same suite number in the same building.

Down the road at 1933 East Dublin Granville, 15 carriers. At 2021, East Dublin Granville, nine. At 5900 Roche Drive, nine more. At 2151 East Dublin Granville, five. Nineteen clusters of two or more carriers within a few miles.

Then there is GIGM HOME HEALTH SERVICES LLC. USDOT number 4286629. Registered as a motor carrier at 1395 East Dublin Granville Road, Suite 222K. GIGM is registered with FMCSA as a motor carrier USDOT number 4286629. It holds active operating authority. It reports zero vehicles. GIGM is also a registered Ohio Medicaid provider. It holds two separate NPI numbers. NPI 1295581239 is registered under the Home Health provider taxonomy. NPI 1528885100 is registered under the In-Home Supportive Care taxonomy. Two billing categories. Two NPI numbers. One company. 

The Ohio Medicaid benefits system lists GIGM as providing paratransit transportation services, home health aide services, nutrition assessment, assistive technology equipment, meals delivery, in-home attendants for people with physical disabilities, housekeeping services, home modification assistance, and adult day care. GIGM also holds CARF accreditation, first issued in 2025, for case management and services coordination with a program focus on integrated substance use disorder and mental health. GIGM registered its USDOT number in August 2024. Seven months earlier, in January 2024, Ohio enacted the largest Medicaid reimbursement rate overhaul in state history. The total increase was approximately $3.4 billion per year across more than 200,000 active providers. 

Most provider categories received a 5 percent increase. Transportation providers received a 79 percent increase. Ohio nearly doubled what it pays for non-emergency medical transportation, and seven months later, a home health company on Dublin Granville Road obtained federal motor carrier and freight broker authority with zero vehicles on file. 

ModivCare, formerly LogistiCare, manages non-emergency medical transportation for most Ohio Medicaid managed care plans. ModivCare paid $3.75 million in 2025 to settle a False Claims Act case in Ohio brought by whistleblowers from a transportation provider, who alleged the company billed for non-medically necessary trips. In Virginia, a 2015 investigation by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission found that unfulfilled NEMT trips under LogistiCare’s contract quadrupled over a three-year period, and that the performance penalty for unfulfilled trips had been inadvertently removed from the contract extension during the same period the company was failing the standard every month. 

275 crashes. Four fatalities. One road.

We cross-referenced the 195 corridor carriers against the full FMCSA inspection and crash database. Of the 195 carriers, 98 have inspection records. Across those 98 carriers, the data shows 1,333 inspections, 2,457 violations, 275 reportable crashes, 4 fatal crashes, and 74 injury crashes.

Columbus Logistics Inc recorded 46 crashes, including 12 injuries, across 97 inspections, resulting in 176 violations. Its TEA crash prediction score places it at CRITICAL risk. Load & Go LLC had 10 crashes, including 3 injuries, in 22 inspections. Smart Truck Express LLC had 23 crashes with 10 injuries in just 10 inspections, drew a $16,290 federal enforcement action for failing to drug-test a driver after a crash, and carries a TEA score of 50 out of 100, placing it in the top tier of crash risk nationally. Prime Groundtrans Inc recorded 6 injury crashes in 14 inspections. G & A Transportation LLC had 6 crashes, including 2 injuries and carries a CRITICAL crash prediction rating.

Leep Trucking LLC has one inspection on file. One. That single inspection resulted in a 100 percent out-of-service rate. The carrier also has 15 recorded crashes, including one fatal and one injury. FMCSA hit Leep with a $5,890 enforcement action for failing to conduct pre-employment drug testing. One inspection. Fifteen crashes. One death. No drug test.

DJAFI Trucking Company LLC had 4 inspections and 4 crashes, two of them injury crashes. Four inspections. Four crashes. That is not a safety record. That is a countdown.

Smart Transport LLC at 2700 East Dublin Granville has a fatal crash on record, a 20 percent driver OOS rate. Central Ohio Transit LLC recorded a 50 percent vehicle OOS rate and a 30 percent driver OOS rate with an injury crash. American Trucking Ladd LLC has a fatal crash and a CRITICAL rating.

97 ghost carriers

Of the 195 carriers in the corridor, 97 have never been inspected by a roadside enforcement officer. They have never been audited. They have never received a safety rating from FMCSA. They exist in the federal registration system and nowhere else.

Some have zero power units. Some have zero drivers. Some have both. They hold active USDOT numbers and, in some cases, active MC authority, but there is no evidence in federal records that they have ever moved a load.

This includes carriers that have held active registrations for years. Borders Link LLC has been registered since May 2011. Central Logistics LLC since October 2012. Start Transportation LLC in February 2014. Hirabe Transport LLC since February 2015. All active. All have zero inspection history.

In the chameleon carrier investigations I have reported on and discussed on CBS’s 60 Minutes, dormant DOT numbers are a known component of the reincarnation cycle. When an active carrier accumulates too many violations or draws enforcement attention, freight and drivers can migrate to a clean DOT number that has been sitting unused. The dormant carrier activates. The dirty one goes quiet. The cycle continues.

I am not saying that is what is happening with these 97 carriers. I am saying the pattern is consistent with what federal investigators look for, and FMCSA’s current systems do not flag it automatically.

Who is getting the freight?

Should this concern every shipper, every broker, and every supply chain executive reading this? Sure, because this is who we keep giving freight to because they’re cheap. 

We cross-referenced the corridor carriers against FMCSA inspection records, which include the name of the shipper whose freight the carrier was hauling at the time of the stop. The world’s largest retailer appears in 175 inspections across 44 different corridor carriers. The aggregate out-of-service rate on those loads was 20.6 percent, with 282 total violations recorded during those stops. That means roughly one in five times, a corridor carrier was stopped while hauling this retailer’s freight, something was wrong enough to take the truck or the driver off the road.

Loads identified as originating from this retailer’s fulfillment network were found in an additional 11 inspections, with a 45.5 percent OOS rate. Nearly half.

One corridor carrier, Manaal Trucking LLC, hauled freight for the world’s largest retailer 25 times and was put out of service in 8 of those inspections. Twenty-five stops. Eight shutdowns. Seventy-three violations. FMCSA subsequently issued a $21,770 enforcement action against Manaal for hours-of-service recordkeeping failures and vehicle maintenance deficiencies. That enforcement action was settled in July 2024. According to the most recent inspection data available, Manaal continued hauling this retailer’s freight after the enforcement action was filed.

Midstate Xpress LLC hauled for the same retailer 12 times, resulting in 2 crashes, including an injury. Camelback Transportation LLC appeared 10 times with 2 OOS events and 21 violations. MSM3 Trucking Inc appeared 9 times with 2 OOS events and 16 violations. A Plus Trucking appeared 9 times with 3 OOS events and 11 violations, plus an injury crash.

Other shippers identified in corridor carrier inspections include one of the nation’s largest logistics companies (16 inspections, 12.5% OOS), a major national retailer (5 inspections, 20% OOS), the United States Postal Service (8 inspections), one of the largest package delivery companies (4 inspections, 25% OOS), a major food manufacturer (2 inspections, 50% OOS), and a global industrial manufacturer (2 inspections, 50% OOS). A home furnishings retailer appeared twice with a 100 percent OOS rate and 12 violations.

Marian Care and Transportation LLC, a 10-unit carrier at 2525 Oakstone Drive, hauled freight for a major logistics and delivery company 18 times across six states.

The broker problem

How does freight from the world’s largest retailer end up on a truck with a 50 percent out-of-service rate operating out of a suite farm in northeast Columbus? The answer is the same market failure I wrote about in this publication three weeks ago, in the context of Montgomery v. Caribe Transport, the Supreme Court case that will decide whether freight brokers can be held liable for negligently selecting unsafe carriers.

There is no federal regulation specifying what vetting criteria a broker must apply before tendering a load to a motor carrier. There is no minimum requirement for how a broker evaluates a carrier’s crash history, out-of-service rate, violation patterns, or insurance quality. Every broker in America maintains its own procurement criteria. Some are rigorous. Many are not.

The satisfactory safety rating has become the de facto minimum standard for broker carrier selection, and it is almost meaningless. According to Jack Van Steenburg, former chief safety officer at the FMCSA, approximately 19,000 motor carriers hold satisfactory ratings among the roughly 750,000 with active authority. That is about 3 percent. The remaining 97 percent of carriers, including every single one of the 195 carriers in the Dublin Granville corridor, have no safety rating at all, or a rating so old it has no bearing on current operations.

When a broker says their procurement policy requires a satisfactory safety rating, they mean they will use any of the 750,000 carriers in America, except for the small fraction that failed a compliance review. That is not vetting. That is a checkbox.

The data that actually tells you about a carrier’s safety, OOS rates, crash history, violation patterns, whether the carrier’s principal appears on multiple registrations, whether the physical address is shared by 28 other carriers, and whether the carrier has ever been inspected at all, all of that exists in public federal records. Connecting those dots requires cross-referencing that neither brokers nor FMCSA’s own systems perform at scale.

The result is that freight from some of the largest and most sophisticated supply chains in the world ends up on trucks registered at suite farms in Columbus, operated by carriers with crash rates that would disqualify them from any rational procurement standard, moved through a brokered market that treats price as the primary selection criterion and safety as an afterthought.

Shared officers, shared infrastructure

Among the 195 corridor carriers, we identified six company officers appearing on multiple carrier registrations, confirmed through shared secondary identifiers such as phone numbers and email addresses.

Abdelaadim Ouami is listed as an officer on two separate USDOT registrations, both named Makia Freight Inc. Same name. Same officer. Same phone number. Two different DOT numbers. The email on the first registration, konyaxpress@gmail.com, does not correspond to either the Makia Freight filing.

Richard Newland is listed on JOCOR Trucking LLC and JOCOR Courier Services LLC. Same phone number. Same physical address. JOCOR Trucking was registered in 2020 with 2 units. JOCOR Courier Services was registered in 2024 with 6 units and 7 drivers.

Khalid Ibrahim appears on Assam Transport Inc at 2794 East Dublin Granville and KWI Transport LLC at 2700 East Dublin Granville. Two nearby addresses. Phone numbers in two different area codes, one in San Diego and one in Seattle, despite both carriers operating in Columbus.

Hashim Moalim appears on Eastern Bull Transport LLC at 2815 Foxworth Drive and Equator Trucking Express LLC at 2812 Pinellas Court. Two addresses in the same residential neighborhood. None of this is illegal. FMCSA regulations do not prohibit individuals from operating multiple carriers, but FMCSA’s registration system does not automatically flag when the same person registers multiple carriers at different addresses. Each application is processed in isolation. With Motus registration updates and partnerships with the private sector and Idemia, this may soon change. The feds are hard at work to put an end to this. 

Equipment moving between carriers

We analyzed vehicle identification numbers from inspection records to track physical trucks moving between corridor carriers and outside entities.

One Freightliner truck tractor was inspected in May 2024 under an 85-unit carrier based in Wisconsin while hauling freight for the world’s largest retailer in Pennsylvania with Wisconsin plates. By April 2025, the same truck appeared under a Columbus-based carrier hauling freight for the General Motors Wentzville Assembly Center with Ohio plates. By September 2025, the same truck with the same Ohio plates was inspected under Duceysane Transport LLC, a carrier within the Dublin Granville corridor. 

Three carriers. Two states. Two plate changes. One truck. Moving from a major national carrier to a GM supplier to a corridor suite farm.

Marian Care and Transportation LLC, the 10-unit carrier operating across 20 states with 72 inspections and 112 violations, showed more than 20 unique vehicles that also appeared under other carriers, including two of the nation’s largest truck leasing companies, one of the largest package delivery companies in the world, and a 325-unit carrier in Arizona. The volume of VIN crossovers on a 10-unit carrier suggests a power-only or lease-on operation cycling equipment from other carriers and leasing companies through its authority.

Seven enforcement cases…$63,330

FMCSA enforcement records show seven federal cases against corridor carriers. Manaal Trucking LLC settled for $21,770 for violations of hours-of-service recordkeeping and vehicle maintenance requirements. This carrier was put out of service 8 times during 25 inspections while hauling freight for the world’s largest retailer.

• Smart Truck Express LLC settled for $16,290 for failure to conduct post-accident drug and alcohol testing and driver fitness violations. The carrier has 23 crashes, 10 of them resulting in injuries.
• Leep Trucking LLC settled for $5,890 for failure to conduct pre-employment drug testing. The carrier has one fatal crash and 15 total crashes.
• MAM Motor Transport LLC settled for $5,890 for the same violation.
• Weyrah Transportation LLC settled for $5,850 for violations of hours-of-service recordkeeping requirements.
• AMF Transport LLC settled for $4,460 for post-accident drug and alcohol testing failures.
• Columbus Logistics Inc settled for $3,980 for vehicle maintenance failures. The carrier has 46 crashes, including 12 resulting in injuries.

Two of the seven cases involve carriers that failed to drug test drivers after crashes. Two more involve carriers that did not drug test drivers before hiring them. Combined, these seven carriers have been involved in over 100 crashes. The total penalty across all seven cases was $63,330. That is less than the cost of a single tractor-trailer.

350 investigators for 700,000 carriers

FMCSA has approximately 350 investigators covering more than 700,000 registered motor carriers. That is one investigator for every 2,000 companies. The agency’s registration system, as Administrator Derek Barrs acknowledged on CBS’s 60 Minutes earlier this year, is decades old.

FMCSA is deploying MOTUS, a modernized system with identity verification, facial recognition, and automated cross-referencing. It is rolling out in phases. Whether MOTUS would flag 29 carriers at one building, or 97 dormant DOTs on one road, or the same phone number on two registrations with the same company name, remains to be seen.

What I can tell you from 25 years in this industry and from building the intelligence platform that identified these patterns is this. The data has been there. It has been sitting in federal databases, inspection records, carrier registration files, and crash reports. Nobody was connecting it. Not at the federal level, not at the state level, and not in the broker procurement offices that send freight down these roads every day. Secretary Duffy, Administrator Barrs, their teams, and the private sector are all working to drive change as we’ve not seen since the FHWA days following Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing by truck. I mention that to emphasize that security and trucking are huge threats. 

The parallel

The Medicaid fraud that Rosiak documented and the carrier concentration patterns in this corridor share the same physical infrastructure. The same suite farms. The same commercial buildings. The same stretch of road. Whether they share anything else is a question for federal investigators.

The structural vulnerability is identical. Both programs process applications under the assumption that applicants are acting in good faith. Both are administered by agencies without the tools or the staffing to verify that assumption at scale. One program pays for home visits that nobody can verify. The other licensed trucks fail inspection half the time they get checked.

The Medicaid fraud costs taxpayers money. What is happening on East Dublin Granville Road costs something that money cannot replace.

Since 2010, fatal crashes involving large trucks have increased by more than 50 percent. In 2022, the most recent full year of federal data, 5,936 people died in crashes involving large trucks. Seventy percent of them were people in other vehicles. Families in minivans. Commuters in sedans. People standing on the shoulder of the highway.

Four of those fatalities trace back to carriers registered in this corridor. Networks that reincarnate. Revenue-focused operations that run a trucking company into the ground, make as much money as possible, and start over with a clean DOT number. That’s the chameleon carrier story of America. That’s also the story I tell in my newest book out today at Amazon. It’s long, but it’s the history of US trucking, how we got here, and where we need to go to make it right.  

Dublin Granville Road is not the only such corridor in America with these issues. It is the one we found because a Medicaid investigation pointed us to the neighborhood.

Where are the others?