Andrew Sobko Lawsuit and the Collapse of CDL 1000

Andrew Sobko, the Chicago entrepreneur who built the digital freight brokerage CDL 1000, was named personally as a defendant in a July 2024 federal lawsuit alleging Fair Labor Standards Act violations, filed as his logistics enterprise collapsed under allegations of widespread nonpayment to carriers, employees, and vendors. The case, brought by former employee Lauren Kroner, is one strand of a broader unraveling that saw a key subsidiary lose its federal operating authority and tens of millions of dollars in reported debts go unpaid.

The Kroner Lawsuit Against Sobko

On July 22, 2024, Lauren Kroner filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against CDL 1000 Inc., CDL 1000 LLC, Batch Freight LLC, and Andrew Sobko individually. The case, Kroner v. CDL 1000, INC., Case No. 1:24-cv-06169, is classified as a Fair Labor Standards Act claim.¹ The specific factual allegations in the complaint are not detailed in available court records beyond the FLSA classification, which broadly concerns alleged labor-standard violations.²

The case is assigned to Judge Edmond E. Chang. As of early 2025, it remained open, and the plaintiff was pursuing alternative methods of serving process on the defendants after apparent difficulty reaching them through standard channels. A summons for Sobko was issued on December 31, 2024.²

The Financial Collapse Behind the Suit

The Kroner filing landed in the middle of a broader collapse. Sobko founded CDL 1000 in 2018 as a technology-driven freight brokerage focused on drayage, and by 2023 it topped a Financial Times ranking of the fastest-growing American companies.³ In February 2024, CDL 1000 acquired the Los Angeles digital freight company Next Trucking in an equity deal financed by Brookfield Growth and Mucker Capital, and the combined enterprise was rebranded under a new parent, Batch Freight LLC.⁴

Within months, a FreightWaves investigation documented the enterprise falling apart. The workforce, roughly 200 employees after the merger, shrank to fewer than a dozen. On September 19, 2024, about 18 of the 28 remaining employees were told they were being furloughed the next day, with no return date.⁵

Two anchor customers left under damaging circumstances. Independent carriers that hauled loads for Amazon through Next Trucking alleged they were owed more than $2 million that the brokerage had received from the shipper but never forwarded. Carriers on Tesla freight reported roughly $3.5 million in payments had not reached them, and Tesla eventually paid the carriers directly, bypassing Next Trucking.⁵

Sources told FreightWaves the enterprise owed tens of millions of dollars overall, including nearly $10 million to equipment leasing companies such as FlexiVan, Milestone Trailer Leasing, and Direct ChassisLink Leasing. Tractors, trailers, and chassis were reportedly repossessed by mid-September 2024, and the company had not paid its $34,000 monthly rent since February.⁵

Regulatory Action and an Allegation of Falsified Filings

Next Freight Solutions, the carrier subsidiary, had its bodily injury and property damage insurance canceled on August 26, 2024. Its federal operating authority was involuntarily revoked by the FMCSA on September 3, 2024, and its Standard Carrier Alpha Code was suspended. The Intermodal Association of North America also suspended the company for failing to follow Uniform Intermodal Interchange and Facilities Access Agreement rules.⁵

Among the more serious allegations FreightWaves reported: a source said that in late August 2024, an executive at the company asked a former employee to falsify the company’s FMCSA MCS-150 form to claim 153 drivers and power units, far more than remained, in an attempt to secure a contract with a national home improvement chain before the company’s insurance was canceled.⁵

Other Disputes Naming Sobko Personally

The Kroner suit is not the only matter reaching Sobko as an individual. Mark Goodacre of American Freightways, a carrier, said he signed a settlement agreement with Next Trucking, CDL 1000, and Hickory Transportation Services in which Sobko personally served as guarantor. Goodacre received two wire payments totaling roughly $122,000, but said the entities defaulted in July 2024 on the remaining balance of about $178,000. As of the September 2024 report, he was still trying to collect.⁵

Former employees told FreightWaves that Sobko had left a “trail of unpaid carriers, employees and legal challenges” even before the Next Trucking merger. Current and former staff also reported unpaid wages and accrued paid time off, and described carriers protesting in the company lobby over unpaid invoices. One source said others should “demand to be paid upfront before I worked with this company or any of the other entities Andrew Sobko controls.”⁵

What Sobko Is Doing Now

Sobko has moved into a different industry. He is founder and CEO of Argentum AI, which describes itself as a decentralized cloud platform for GPU computing resources used in artificial intelligence workloads. The company raised a pre-seed round led by Banyan Ventures, with participation from the crypto exchange Kraken and angel investors, and operates an “asset-light” marketplace connecting GPU owners with enterprise customers running AI training, 3D rendering, and scientific simulations.⁶⁷ In April 2026, Argentum AI announced a $1.5 billion agreement to provide large-scale GPU cloud capacity to an unnamed AI company, alongside two additional agreements totaling $240 million.⁸

1
PACER Monitor. Kroner v. CDL 1000, INC
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UniCourt. Kroner v. CDL 1000, INC
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Financial Times. CDL 1000 Tops FT Ranking of Fastest Growing American Companies
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FreightWaves. CDL 1000 Acquires Next Trucking
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FreightWaves. Digital Freight Broker Furloughs Workers After Losing Key Customers
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Banyan Ventures. Banyan Ventures Leads Argentum AI’s Pre-Seed Round
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U.Today. Argentum AI Completes Funding Round for Its Decentralized Compute Marketplace
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Investing.com. $1.5 Billion Agreement Signed by Argentum AI to Provide Large-Scale GPU Cloud Capacity