After deadly bus crash, investigators probe company's links to other carriers

The company that operated a bus involved in a deadly crash in Virginia last week has ties to a broader network of travel firms, including one shut down by regulators a decade ago due "excessive" speeding violations, a CBS News investigation has found. Now, federal authorities are also looking into those connections. The network bears some of the hallmarks of operators who, under scrutiny of federal safety regulators, stay in business by creating new companies under different names, but at the same locations, with the same people and and sometimes using the same buses. In the trucking and passenger bus industry, they are commonly called chameleon carriers. The phenomenon has been the subject of a yearlong CBS News investigation that identified at least 10,000 of them across the country . "It's about hiding who you are," said Rob Carpenter, a safety consultant for the trucking and busing industries. "When a company gets to disappear and come back as a stranger, every bad brake and unqualified driver disappears right along with it until a wreck on the interstate drags it all back into the daylight." Five people were killed and dozens injured on May 29 when an E&P Travel Inc. bus slammed into traffic stopped at a work zone on I-95 in Stafford County, Virginia. Five people were killed when a bus struck vehicles on Interstate 95 near Quantico, Virginia, on May 29, 2026. …