/ Truck & 18-Wheeler
Truck and 18-Wheeler Accident Lawyers
A collision with a loaded tractor-trailer is not a bigger car wreck. It is a case about a regulated business — its driver, its logs, its maintenance records and its insurance — and those records start disappearing almost immediately.
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Injured in a collision involving a commercial truck?
/ The short answer
Why a Truck Case Runs Differently
Three things separate a commercial vehicle collision from an ordinary car wreck, and all three matter in the first weeks.
01
There is a rulebook
Interstate motor carriers operate under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations — 49 CFR Parts 350–399 — covering driver qualification, hours of service, drug and alcohol testing, and inspection and maintenance. A rule violation is evidence a car wreck simply does not have.
02
There is more than one company
The driver, the motor carrier, the trailer’s owner, the company that loaded it, a maintenance contractor and a freight broker can all be different businesses with different insurers and different lawyers.
03
The evidence is perishable
Electronic logging data, engine and event-recorder data, dashcam footage, dispatch messages and inspection reports are business records on business retention schedules. They are not kept forever, and nobody preserves them for you by default.
The carrier sent an investigator within hours. Who is working for you?
/ Hours of service
The Federal Driving Limits, As Written
These are the limits for property-carrying drivers under 49 CFR § 395.3. They are not guidance; they are the rule the carrier is operating under.
Before the shift
A driver “may not drive without first taking 10 consecutive hours off duty.”
The 14-hour window
A driver may not drive after 14 consecutive hours have passed from coming on duty following those 10 hours off.
11 hours of driving
Within that 14-hour window, a driver may drive a total of 11 hours — and, with limited short-haul exceptions, not past 8 hours of driving without a consecutive 30-minute interruption.
The weekly ceiling
60 hours on duty in 7 consecutive days, or 70 in 8, depending on whether the carrier runs every day. A period may end with 34 or more consecutive hours off duty.
Text read from the current Code of Federal Regulations at ecfr.gov, Title 49 § 395.3. Exceptions in § 395.1 apply to some operations. This is a description of the regulation, not advice about a particular crash.
Electronic logging data can be overwritten. It has to be demanded early.
/ Inspection and maintenance
The Records a Carrier Keeps on Its Own Trucks
Part 396 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations covers inspection, repair and maintenance. A carrier’s own files on a tractor and trailer — what was inspected, what was found, what was actually fixed and when — sit inside its systems, not anywhere a member of the public can reach.
That is why written notice to preserve them goes out early. Once a file has aged off a retention schedule, no amount of later effort brings it back.
More than one company is usually responsible in an 18-wheeler wreck.
/ Insurance
Commercial Policies Are Not Car Policies
Federal law sets minimum financial responsibility for interstate motor carriers, and those minimums sit far above what a private driver carries. What a given carrier actually holds is a question of fact — but the floor is fixed by regulation.
$750,000
Minimum for for-hire interstate carriage of non-hazardous property, GVWR 10,001 lb or more — 49 CFR § 387.9
$1,000,000
Minimum for oil and many hazardous materials and wastes listed in the regulation
$5,000,000
Minimum for certain bulk hazardous materials and highway route controlled quantities of Class 7 material
Federal carrier rules apply to these cases, and they are not optional.
/ Evidence
What Has to Be Preserved, and When
A trucking case is usually won or lost on records the other side controls. Electronic logging device data, engine control module and event-recorder downloads, dispatch and messaging logs, driver qualification files, drug and alcohol testing records, and inspection, repair and maintenance records under 49 CFR Part 396 all sit inside the carrier’s own systems.
Written notice asking a carrier and its insurer to preserve that material is one of the first things we send. It is also why calling early matters more in this kind of case than in almost any other.
On your side, the useful things are simpler: photographs of both vehicles and the scene, the responding agency and report number, the tractor and trailer numbers, the carrier’s name and USDOT number from the door, and the names of anyone who stopped.
If you can, photograph
The door lettering — carrier name and USDOT number.
The tractor and trailer unit numbers, and the trailer’s plate.
Both vehicles from several angles, and the resting positions.
The load, if it is visible — how it was secured can matter.
Commercial policies are larger — and defended harder.
/ The physical evidence
The Tractor and Trailer Are Evidence Too
Brakes, tyres, lights, coupling hardware and load securement all leave physical evidence, and all of it can be repaired, replaced or sent back into service within days of a collision.
Where it matters, we ask for the equipment to be held and inspected before that happens. It is a short request that has to be made at the right moment.
Was the driver fatigued, or the load unsecured? The records will say.
/ Common questions
Questions People Ask Us About Truck Cases
Is the deadline the same as a car accident case?
For a Texas personal injury claim, yes — Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 generally requires suit to be filed not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues, and a claim for injury resulting in death generally accrues on the date of death. The statute contains exceptions, and how the deadline applies depends on the facts.
The practical deadline is much shorter than the legal one, because the carrier’s records age on their own schedule.
I think I was partly at fault. Does that end it?
Not automatically. Under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.001, a claimant may not recover damages if his percentage of responsibility is greater than 50 percent. Below that line a claim can still proceed, with recovery reduced in proportion to responsibility.
People routinely misjudge their own share of fault in a truck collision, in both directions. It is worth asking before assuming.
The insurer called me the same day. Should I give a statement?
You are not required to give a recorded statement to another party’s insurer, and a commercial carrier’s adjuster is a professional doing a job for their side.
Get advice first. That is free here, and it costs you nothing to ask.
Who can actually be responsible besides the driver?
Depending on the facts, more than one business can be involved — the motor carrier that employed or contracted the driver, the owner of the tractor or trailer, the company that loaded or secured the freight, a maintenance contractor, or a broker.
Which of them is responsible for a particular crash is exactly what an investigation is for. It is not something to guess at from a webpage.
Truck wrecks across Texas, from the Valley to the Metroplex.
/ Related
If This Was Not a Commercial Truck
If a passenger vehicle was involved, the case usually runs as an ordinary Texas car accident claim. If the crash happened during work on an oilfield or industrial site, or the vehicle belonged to an employer, other rules can apply — see our full list of case types.
Garza Resendez represents injured people across Texas from our office in Edinburg, in English and in Spanish.
Where we take cases
Our principal office is at 5317 S. McColl Road, Edinburg, Texas 78539.
We accept cases across Texas. Trucking cases in particular follow the freight — the border crossings, I-35, I-10 and the Gulf Coast corridors.
Call or text 956-696-4878.
Commercial truck wrecks statewide — no fee unless we recover for you.