Serbian businessman Aleksandar Mimic founded Super Ego, which is based in Elmhurst, Illinois, a peaceful suburb of Chicago where warehouse districts and strip malls coexist. Since then, the company has developed into something far more sophisticated than a straightforward leasing business. When 60 Minutes called, the company’s attorneys relied on its description of itself as an equipment leasing company rather than a trucking carrier. However, federal investigators, court records, and a whistleblower who spoke to CBS from an undisclosed location in Europe with his face hidden for protection claim that the leasing label is merely a cover for what is essentially a coordinated trucking business that uses brokers to book loads, dispatches drivers from Belgrade offices, and collects fees through a network of US-registered subsidiary companies.

The testimony of Daniel Sanchez, a driver who drove for eight years before joining Super Ego in 2025, was the most visceral aspect of the 60 Minutes report. He talked about working 18-hour shifts, getting negative paychecks, and being told by managers that stopping for anything other than the bathroom was not acceptable. The following day, the company hired a new driver after he finally parked the truck and declined to continue driving. The $35,000 he had been paying to eventually own the truck was lost when he lost his job in January 2026. The lease-to-own agreement, like many others in this sector, had clauses that made ownership seem unachievable. Owning his own rig was his dream. When you hear him describe it, it’s difficult to avoid feeling the weight of that.

Super Ego Holding: The Trucking Network Accused of Stealing Driver Pay, Faking Safety Records, and Running From the Law

The documented evidence is especially striking when it comes to the claims of wage theft. Two copies of the same rate confirmation sheet—official documentation attesting to the amount a broker agrees to pay for a specific load, from which the driver receives a percentage—can be found in court documents examined by 60 Minutes. The authentic version displays a $1,500 payment. The modified version, which is said to have been shared internally, displays $800. The $700 difference is invisible to the driver. The same basic story was told by seven drivers to CBS: their earnings were almost entirely depleted by inflated fees for insurance, repairs, and lease payments. It is clearly described as a fraud scheme in the class action lawsuit, which currently represents over 800 truckers.

Then there is the manipulation of ELDs, which are electronic logging devices mandated by federal law for commercial truckers to monitor their service hours. Eleven hours of driving before a required rest period is the legal limit. Dispatchers in Serbia could remotely reset those clocks, essentially erasing the hours a driver had already logged and giving them a new set, according to Sanchez and audio recordings played during the segment. In one recording, a dispatcher is heard telling a driver who is having trouble meeting a 24-hour delivery window, “Yeah I know, I know, but we can fix your clock.” The phrase “we can fix your clock” sticks in your memory because it implies that tired drivers were being forced onto highways with tens of thousands of pounds of freight and sleep-deprived reaction times, sharing the road with school buses and passenger cars.

One of those school buses was struck. Two children were seriously hurt when a Super Ego-affiliated truck struck it at 72 miles per hour. In just the last two years, chameleon carriers connected to Super Ego have recorded nearly 15,000 safety violations and roughly 500 accidents, according to data gathered by Fusable, the risk assessment company that provided analysis to CBS. Compared to regular operators, chameleon carriers are four times more likely to be involved in collisions.

The story is structurally frustrating because of the chameleon element. In the US, it takes around $1,000, a form, and 21 days to start a new trucking business. No need to be an American. The underlying operators were not thoroughly screened. A carrier can simply dissolve the entity, register a new one with a clean DOT number, and proceed after accruing enough violations. In the 60-minute video, the driver is seen using duct tape to remove and replace door decals, switching between shell company names at his dispatcher’s request.

Currently, 350 investigators work for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which is in charge of monitoring all 700,000 trucking companies that operate on American roads. One investigator for every 2,000 businesses is a ratio that helps explain why this has continued. During the broadcast, FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs openly acknowledged the issue, characterizing it as a “front door problem” with the agency’s antiquated, forty-year-old registration system. Super Ego is one of the top ten investigative priorities for the agency, he said.

Super Ego Holding disputes any misconduct. According to the company’s attorneys, it is a leasing company and is not liable for the actions of drivers or affiliated carriers. It’s possible that the legal position will hold in some ways; courts will need to determine where accountability truly lies, and corporate structures intended to divide liability are not uncommon. It becomes challenging to maintain the notion that what is being described here is merely a disjointed network of independent operators, though, after hearing the whistleblower describe the Belgrade office where dispatchers were ranked on leaderboards by how much they had extracted from drivers—top performers in one pay period having cut nearly $24,000 from driver compensation.

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