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.
That crash followed a similar incident in 2024 when nine people were injured when an E&P Travel bus rammed into a vehicle at a construction site in North Carolina.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is currently probing E&P Travel Inc.’s potential links to more than a dozen current and former bus companies operating in the Northeast, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is working with other agencies to investigate the latest crash, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said. “Any company, trainer, or school that contributed to putting an unqualified driver on the road will face intense scrutiny,” Duffy said.
An FMCSA spokesperson on Thursday declined to discuss details of the investigation.
In addition to the accidents, E&P Travel itself has been cited three times in two years for “speeding 15 or more miles per hour over the speed limit” and once for a driver who failed an English proficiency test, federal records show.
The driver of the bus in last week’s crash, Jing S. Dong of Staten Island, New York, is now facing five felony involuntary manslaughter charges. Despite the company’s history of violations, E&P received a “satisfactory” safety rating from the FMCSA in April.
E&P Travel was incorporated in North Carolina in November 2023, listing its headquarters as a residential apartment in Kings Mountain, N.C., and its CEO as Shuo Liu. Efforts to reach Liu at the company’s email address and phone number were not immediately successful.
E&P Travel’s filings with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in 2023 list its officer as Joyce Gao. Joyce Gao is also listed on a motorcoach association directory as the CEO of a separate bus company, Super Bus Inc.
Ronghai Gao, the president of Super Bus Inc. according to Massachusetts records, told CBS News Thursday that listing is incorrect and that he is the CEO of Super Bus.
Ronghai Gao said Joyce Gao was a bookkeeper at Super Bus until about April. He declined to say whether he and Joyce Gao are related. “I cannot tell you about it,” he said. “This is my personal stuff.”
Ronghai Gao also declined to discuss Joyce Gao’s apparent employment at his company while she was an officer at the then newly-formed E&P Travel. “That’s her personal stuff,” he said. Gao declined to answer further questions and the call was terminated. Efforts to reach Joyce Gao were not successful.
Super Bus currently has a “Satisfactory” safety rating from the FMCSA, according to federal records, which list 15 violations over the past two years including speeding and other issues.
The names Ronghai Gao and Joyce Gao are tied to multiple current and former busing operations in the Northeast, CBS News found.
One of those companies is Pandora Travel Inc., a Massachusetts-headquartered firm that ran regular bus tours from a storefront in New York City to destinations across the eastern United States. Federal regulators accused the company in a 2014 press release of “continuing serious violations and non-compliance with previously identified federal safety regulations.”
Ronghai Gao was identified in FMCSA investigative records as the general manager for Pandora Travel. He’s also listed as the point of contact for the company in New York City records listing the address at that same storefront.
“Pandora Travel Inc failed to monitor drivers and take corrective action to deter unsafe driving practices,” an FMCSA inspector wrote in regulatory records reviewed by CBS News, despite knowledge of drivers operating in “excess of posted speed limits.”
Records show Pandora’s drivers had “histories that would show patterns of unsafe driving practices,” including one driver with 23 speeding and moving violations.
Citations against Pandora Travel included failing to exercise caution while operating in a heavy snow storm in January 2014, resulting in a rollover crash on I-80 in New Jersey that injured seven people.
The FMCSA reviewed GPS data and found four drivers were “exceeding the posted speeds by 10mph or greater for 50 days out of 135 days reviewed,” according to inspection records.
When FMCSA officials visited the Lawrence, Massachusetts, headquarters of Pandora Travel in 2014 they found an empty desk, a vacuum cleaner, and no staff or business paperwork, according to pictures and notes included in the regulatory filings.
Regulators reached a settlement agreement with Pandora Travel in 2014 that allowed it to continue operating under certain conditions.
Regulators ordered Pandora Travel shut down for good in 2017 after finding that the company “engaged in a pattern or practice of avoiding regulatory compliance or masking or otherwise concealing regulatory noncompliance.”
