Illinois trucking company shuts down unexpectedly, leaving drivers stranded and unpaid

An apparently fraudulent trucking company called Cromex Inc., based out of Villa Park, Ill., left several of its employees in the lurch under disturbing circumstances this week.

A father-and-son driving team with a combined 24 years of driving experience under their belts says the owner of Cromex, Danijel (or Daniel) Krizanac lured them up to the Chicago area from Jacksonville, Fla., under false pretenses, only to leave them stranded with none of their pay and no way to return home.

The son of the father-son team, who chose to remain anonymous for he and his father’s protection, says Cromex failed to send replacement trucks as promised while they waited in a nearby hotel for the new ones to arrive. When they tried to contact Krizanak, they were eventually “ghosted,” meaning Krizanak just disappeared and stopped responding to them.

“It was all empty promises,” the younger trucker told FreightWaves, choosing only to be identified by his Twitter handle of @RunnTDC or SuperHussle. “I thought we were friends but now he’s in the wind and he’s not going to respond to me anymore. He’s blocked all of our numbers.”

(Related: The trucking situation in America was on rocky ground last summer, too.)

Not all trucking companies are equal: Some are apparently run by criminal scammers

Initially, Krizanac did respond while the father and son awaited what they thought would be replacement trucks. He said, according to one of the text messages received by FreightWaves:

“Company is bankrupt and closed, bro. Trucks went back to (the) bank.”

It is unclear whether or not Cromex actually went bankrupt, but we do know that wife Ervina Krizanac recently opened a new trucking company called Boscro Cargo in Evanston, Ill., that had its operating authority reinstated on March 31.

“According to FMCSA data, Boscro is using the same DOT and motor carrier numbers as another company she owns, Royal Queen Trans Inc., which had its operating authority revoked in March 2018,” FreightWaves reported.

While still in operation, Cromex operated a very poorly run business with higher-than-average out-of-service rates, meaning its trucks were constantly breaking down and inoperable. Many of them were crashing as well and had to be towed away.

“The first time we left after six months was because the truck was in the shop more than it was on the road and we barely made any money,” SuperHussle said, revealing that he and his father had driven for Cromex twice. “We came back to Cromex when the company we moved to started to not make money or pay on time.”

When he asked Krizanac when he and his father would be paid and why there were so many problems, Krizanac cruelly and crudely responded with, “Because I lose money running your a** on a truck [with] payment,” adding “You won’t get s*** now and find a new job.”

In this latest incident, after being asked by SuperHussle how he and his father were supposed to get back to Florida from Chicago, Krizanac told him to “figure it out and start making calls for a new job.”

“Since the market went into the tank, he can’t pay us on time, if at all, and now he just lured us up here under false pretenses to dump us in the street, literally,” SuperHussle told FreightWaves about the matter.

In the comments, one person wrote that the freight industry is in desperate need of better vetting of carriers.

“They just shut down and restart again under another name,” she wrote.

“They are affecting people’s lives doing this, and no agency will take responsibility for this happening. It is rampant. Why would any scammer care if they had to shut down? Seems like no one cares, as long they get their fees.”

More related news can be found at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

FreightWaves.com

NaturalNews.com