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Trucking companies seek to force Indianapolis brokerage into bankruptcy

Owner states brokerage’s collection rate dropped from 99.1% to 77% over 4-month period

Trucking companies seek to force CMA Freight Services of Indianapolis into involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy over unpaid freight bills. Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

A coalition of trucking companies filed a petition on Monday to force an Indianapolis-based freight brokerage into Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings for unpaid transportation services.

The involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana, claims CMA Freight Services LLC owes 28 trucking companies nearly $40,000, according to the filing. 

Tony Mangini, legal manager for Alexander, Winton & Associates, a contingency-based collection firm headquartered in Olive Branch, Mississippi, said the move was necessary after the freight brokerage failed to pay the petitioners — mostly small-business truckers — since October.

“At the end of the day, our clients rendered services for CMA [Freight] and CMA didn’t pay them,” Mangini told FreightWaves. “I think this is an avenue we have to pursue because there’s just so many of our clients involved that are owed a substantial amount of money.”


The largest unsecured creditors listed in the petition include Easy & Quick Trans. Inc., headquartered in Roselle, Illinois, which is owed $4,815; MAG Carriers LLC of Dearing, Georgia, which is owed $3,840; and Kappa Transport LLC of Dallas, owed more than $2,220.

Andy Dittmaier, general manager of CMA, told FreightWaves the claims are against the company’s shuttered brokerage, CMA Freight Services, not against the trucking side of the business, CMA Logistics, which has nine drivers and 10 power units, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s SAFER website. 

Dittmaier claims the brokerage side of the business turned south after he allegedly brought on a freight agent, based in Arizona, who was “fantastic at sales, but horrible at everything else.”

“He didn’t follow our operating procedures, moved hundreds of loads for customers that were not credit-approved, exceeded credit limits on customers, told carriers they didn’t need to turn in paperwork,” Dittmaier told FreightWaves. 


The CMA general manager claims the new freight agent caused the company’s collection rate to drop from 99.1% to 77%, and nearly $1.2 million in “missing” revenue was discovered since the agent was terminated.

“Customers don’t pay us, we can’t pay carriers,” he said. 

Since shuttering the brokerage, Dittmaier said he has been working with a forensic accountant to determine independently “what we are owed and what we owe others.”

He is also working with an attorney, who is aware of the involuntary bankruptcy petition, in hopes of reverting the involuntary Chapter 7 into a Chapter 11 in an attempt to reorganize.

“The attorney’s job is to confine the damage to the entity involved, CMA Freight Services,” Dittmaier said. “The trucking side, CMA Logistics, is healthy on its own.”

Filing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition would give CMA an opportunity “to pursue all of these non paying customers, many of whom are established companies that do have the ability to pay.”

“If we are successful at collecting from them, then everyone we owe will get paid,” he said.

A year ago in May, Dittmaier said he pumped in nearly $200,000 of his own money to keep the fledgling brokerage afloat.


“I brought that agent on because I knew he could sell and that growth was what was needed,  but selling doesn’t matter much if the customers don’t pay,” Dittmaier said.

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Click for more articles by FreightWaves’ Clarissa Hawes.

6 Comments

  1. Steven

    Only in trucking industry the real workers are ripoff and legislators are requiring more money for insurance while they ignore everything else.
    So as long everyone else get their money it’s ok for carriers to haul at their expense shipper freight.

  2. KC

    CMA’s first mistake is the belief that their payment policies toward their carriers are dependent on receiving payment from their customers. Those are two separate contracts and two separate transactions completely independent of each other. I’ve never once signed an agreement with a broker that contained that stipulation, and anytime a carrier sees that stipulation in an agreement, they should run and run fast.

  3. Dani S

    Zero accountability people like this Dittmair guy make me sick. I hope judge assigned to his case sees through his BS and places lean on his trucking property. His drivers should leave. There are better companies out there.

    1. KC Long

      That negates the purpose of keeping entities separate. Lumping a separate entity into a credit issue would be bad for the industry as a whole. It sounds like they already had to close the doors on that part of their business due to their customers not paying. It’s a stretch to say that drivers from this separate company should leave or that there are better companies since we know nothing about how the trucking side is being managed.

      Carriers often assume that brokers are flush with cash to pay carriers. The fact is, brokers work on very thin margins and if the customers don’t pay, there’s very little room to cover the losses. It sounds like a single agent caused these issues and has since been removed from that position. Seeking payment is one thing but it doesn’t help anyone to also try to force punitive action on any other affiliated entity.

      1. Will Allen

        When both entities were operating under the same name, CMA Logistics, there must be an investigation as to what separations were really in place. CMA Logistics is the name listed on some of the BOLs on the loads which were not paid. The brokerage was CMA Freight Services dba CMA Logistics. Most can see the issue here and the way CMA was operating was ripe for double brokering. If the trucking side was obtaining these loads and then rebrokering to the brokerage side then yes the trucking company should and will be pursued.

Comments are closed.

Clarissa Hawes

Clarissa has covered all aspects of the trucking industry for 16 years. She is an award-winning journalist known for her investigative and business reporting. Before joining FreightWaves, she wrote for Land Line Magazine and Trucks.com. If you have a news tip or story idea, send her an email to [email protected].