Originally published at: Another CA truck crash and two dead kids on Highway 99 - FreightWaves
A Freightliner Cascadia operated by Amritsar Trans Inc., a five-truck carrier out of Manteca, California, rear-ended three vehicles on Highway 99 near Lodi on May 19, 2026, ■■■■■■■ two young men. The driver fled on foot. The carrier sits inside a web of 267 carriers clustered across residential addresses in the same ZIP code, and 10 involuntary revocation actions.
Manteca, California — home of the Singh Brothers. 2025 Total Population: 94,000 souls.
Pull the USDOT data and the modern American freight system starts telling a story most of the industry already knows but rarely says out loud.
Based strictly on stated CDL driver counts alone, roughly: 9% of Manteca’s total population is directly represented by commercial truck drivers tied to authorized for-hire carriers. Operationally, the real trucking-dependent economic footprint is likely far larger — potentially 20% to 30%+ of the local economy when indirect employment and family dependency are considered.
In one concentrated freight geography, roughly 2,426 companies operate as “Authorized For-Hire” interstate motor carriers. About 64% of those authorities first appeared after January 1, 2016. Of those newer entrants, approximately 70% contain “Singh” in either the company name or principal officer fields.
That alone proves nothing improper. Most are likely hardworking small-business operators trying to build trucking companies the same way immigrant freight communities have for generations.
But the operational data reveals something far more important than ethnicity:
the extraordinary scale of carrier proliferation under a weak federal oversight structure.
Here is the number that matters most:
roughly 94% of those newer authorized-for-hire carriers show no formal FMCSA safety rating whatsoever.
Read that again.
Thousands of interstate trucking companies can:
- obtain authority,
- haul freight nationwide,
- move refrigerated food,
- transport hazmat,
- operate in major urban corridors,
- and build broker relationships,
- without ever receiving a meaningful field safety evaluation.
This is the dirty little secret of American trucking deregulation.
The so-called “New Entrant” system became largely administrative instead of operational. “Authorized” increasingly came to mean: paperwork processed, not safety verified.
Meanwhile freight brokers, shippers, and giant integrated logistics ecosystems continued chasing ultra-cheap capacity while pretending carrier selection had nothing to do with highway safety.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC decision just shattered that fantasy.
Carrier selection is now legally recognized as a safety decision.
And sophisticated freight buyers cannot credibly claim ignorance anymore. The data is public:
- CSA scores,
- inspections,
- crashes,
- operating histories,
- authority timelines,
- and carrier identities.
The three largest integrated “Shipper-Carrier-Broker” ecosystems in America — Walmart, Amazon, and FedEx Freight — understand freight economics better than almost anyone on Earth. They know exactly what ultra-cheap freight produces operationally:
- exhausted drivers,
- unsafe parking,
- deferred maintenance,
- double-brokering,
- cargo theft,
- and chameleon carriers.
The pressure always travels downhill until it reaches either the driver, the highway, or the motoring public.
Manteca is not the problem.
Manteca is the mirror.
It reflects what happens when freight volume, weak oversight, fragmented enforcement, and relentless cost compression collide inside a deregulated transportation marketplace where everyone wanted plausible deniability — until the lawsuits started arriving.
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