Practice Areas
Truck & 18-Wheelers.
Eighty thousand pounds does not have accidents. It has causes, and I find them.
Before you call
The truck-wreck calls I get most, answered the way I would answer them on the phone. The company starts working the day of the crash, so call early. Read the answers → Or call now: (713) 239-2300.
What I take, and how to reach me
I am Orlando Rodriguez, a trial lawyer. The office is in Houston. I take crashes with 18-wheelers, tankers, dump trucks, delivery trucks and other commercial vehicles in Houston and across South Texas, including Webb, Maverick, Val Verde, Starr, Hidalgo and Cameron counties, in English and in Spanish. No fees unless we win. I am licensed by the State Bar of Texas and admitted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Call (713) 239-2300. If you can, have the crash report number, the name on the truck’s door, your photos and the names of any witnesses, and do not give the trucking company’s insurer a recorded statement before we talk. The first thing I do is send the carrier a letter demanding that it preserve the truck’s electronic logs, engine data and camera footage, because that evidence can be gone within weeks.
A loaded 18-wheeler can weigh up to eighty thousand pounds, more than twenty times your car. When it hits, physics does the rest, and the trucking company knows it.
A truck wreck is not a bigger car wreck. It is a case against a company with federal regulators, professional drivers, and often a rapid-response team that reaches the scene before you have left the hospital, working to shape the story early. You need someone who knows the rules that govern that company and how to hold it to them.
Federal rules change everything
Interstate trucking runs under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. They cap how long a driver can be on the road, require electronic logging of those hours, and set standards for inspection, maintenance, and driver qualification. When a carrier or driver breaks one of those rules and someone is hurt, the violation is not just paperwork. It is evidence of negligence.
Federal hours-of-service rules (49 C.F.R. Part 395) limit a property-carrying driver to eleven hours of driving within a fourteen-hour on-duty window after ten hours off, require a thirty-minute break after eight cumulative hours of driving, and cap weekly hours at sixty in seven days or seventy in eight. Hours are recorded by an electronic logging device.
The evidence disappears fast
The proof in a truck case lives in the truck and in the company's files: the electronic logs, the engine control module that records speed and braking, dashcam footage, the driver qualification file, dispatch and maintenance records. Much of it can be overwritten or discarded in the ordinary course of business within weeks. A preservation letter sent in the first days, before that data cycles out, is one of the most important steps in the whole case.
It is not just the driver
The driver is often the least of it. A trucking company can be responsible for the driver's conduct on the job, and separately for its own: negligent hiring of an unqualified driver, inadequate training, pressure to run illegal hours, or skipped maintenance. Naming the company, not only the person behind the wheel, is what makes a serious case whole.
Types of truck accident cases I handle
Driver Fatigue & Hours of Service
Federal law caps a trucker's hours for a reason. The logs that prove those limits were broken are the heart of many cases.
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Underride Accidents
When a car slides beneath a trailer, the results are catastrophic. Guards are required, and often missing or inadequate.
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Black Box & ELD Data
The truck records what the driver will not admit. Preserving that data early can decide the case.
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Trucking Company Liability
The company that hired, trained, and dispatched the driver is often the real defendant, with the real resources.
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From The Night Docket
The physics and the proof behind these wrecks, from my writing desk:
The Body: Saddle Tanks →
Where a truck tractor carries its fuel, and what happens when a crash reaches it. The tanks typically hang outside the frame, beneath the cab. The federal crash test for fuel systems covers vehicles rated at 10,000 pounds or less; the rule for a heavy tractor measures the tank alone, by a drop test. Federal investigators wrote in 2017 that the location of one tractor’s tank made it vulnerable, and asked for an updated standard. Diesel is slow to light, and a crash can supply the heat. The fire is its own question in the case, apart from who caused the crash.
The Body: Up to Speed →
What a loaded truck cannot do when it pulls onto a highway. A federal study says trucks accelerate more slowly than passenger cars, that poor acceleration produces large speed differences in traffic, and that crash involvement may be 15 to 16 times more likely at a difference of 20 miles an hour. The Texas design manual wants a vehicle on an entrance ramp within 5 mph of freeway speed by the time it joins traffic; a driveway often gives a truck no such room. The law puts the first duty on the one entering, to yield to the vehicle approaching on the highway, and the model manual behind the commercial driver handbooks says why the gap has to be bigger.
Dispatch: Contact →
A piece of a truck works loose on the freeway, crosses a windshield and comes to rest in the back seat, and the truck does not stop. The law answers a shed-part case twice, and the two answers do not open the same door. If the truck is found, federal rules carry the case: for a load, the securement rules, under which the system that holds the cargo must withstand set forces, the driver must inspect the load within the first fifty miles and again as the trip runs on, and the duty reaches the carrier that dispatched it; for a part of the truck itself, the carrier’s duty to keep every part in safe and proper operating condition at all times. If the truck is never found, Texas sends the injured person to their own uninsured motorist coverage, where the statute asks for actual physical contact with the unknown vehicle, and the Texas Supreme Court has held that a part that detached and struck the car is not contact with the vehicle. Which is why the first hour, and the record that names the truck, is the whole case.
Dispatch: The Card →
When a loaded truck crosses a median or drifts off the road and the first account calls the cause unclear, the list is almost always the same: it could have been inattention, sleep, or a medical problem. That is a list of possibilities, not a finding, and in a commercial case the answer is rarely a mystery for long, because the law made the driver prove he was fit for that seat, on a schedule, in writing, before the crash. The medical examiner on a federal registry, the certificate good for at most two years and less when a condition needs watching, the conditions that disqualify, the record the carrier must keep, what the law asks of the company that put him in the cab, and why the sudden-collapse defense is tested against the very card the law required.
One Word: Securement →
Securement: the word the federal rules use for everything that keeps a load on a truck, and the rules are written in numbers. The system has to hold when the load is thrown forward with eight tenths of its weight and sideways with half of it, the tie-downs together have to be rated for at least half the weight of what they hold, an article longer than ten feet needs two tie-downs and one more for every ten feet after that, a damaged strap may not be used at all, and the driver has to check the load within the first fifty miles and again as the trip goes on. What the rules require, how Texas adopts them, the loose-material rule in the Texas code, why a broken rule is evidence and not an automatic verdict, who besides the driver owes the duty, and what a reconstructionist counts when a load comes off.
One Word: Backing →
Backing: a truck does most of its damage going forward, and the law is written for that, but a rig that backs across a road at night is doing the one thing the commercial driver’s manual says to avoid whenever you can, and Texas writes the rule in two sentences: not unless it can be done safely and without interfering with traffic, and never on the shoulder or roadway of a controlled-access highway. What the manual says about backing, why the side of a trailer across a dark road is the hardest thing on the road to see in time, what a preliminary failed-to-observe statement is and is not, how Texas divides the fault, and the evidence that belongs to someone else.
Dispatch: Nineteen to One →
A car rear-ending another car is a bad day. A loaded truck rear-ending a car is a different kind of event, and the difference is not the driver’s temper and not the speed alone. It is weight. Federal law caps a rig at 80,000 pounds; the barrier the Insurance Institute uses to stand in for a midsize SUV weighs 4,200. That is about nineteen to one, and when two bodies that unequal meet, momentum is shared out by weight, so the car takes almost the whole change in speed while the truck barely slows. The half second of brake lag and the stopping distance a loaded rig needs, the arithmetic of the impact, and the Texas law that puts the assured-clear-distance duty on the driver behind, read strictly because of the weight but still a jury’s to find, with the carrier behind the driver and the truck’s own computer recording the seconds that decide it.
Dispatch: The Other Clock →
A truck can be perfectly legal and still be driven at the worst hour the body has. Before dawn on Monday a pickup and a semi came together on Interstate 10 near Tornillo, in far east El Paso County, and one person died; no name, no cause. What the federal hours-of-service rule counts and what it never counts, the two low points in the daily rhythm of alertness, the roughly one fatal crash in five the NTSB, citing a AAA Foundation study, says involves a drowsy driver, and why a clean logbook is where the questions start.
One Word: Furnished a Condition →
Every defendant in a wreck case would like to have been scenery, and this is the sentence that asks for it: that his negligence merely furnished a condition the real cause happened in. The Texas test for cause in fact, the two halves of substantial factor, why a speeding car is not a condition and a stopped truck is not always one, and what the Fifth Circuit said this week about who decides.
One Word: Warning Devices →
A truck stopped in a lane is the most dangerous thing on the road that is not moving, and federal law gives its driver ten minutes to say so. The flashers that must go on at once, the three triangles and where each one goes, what two hundred feet is worth at seventy, what Texas law lets a disabled truck do, and how the missing triangle changes who pays for the crash that follows.
Dispatch: The Load Behind the Cab →
A truck driver spends the shift watching the road ahead, and when a loaded truck stops hard the collision he cannot see is behind the seat: the freight keeps moving after the truck does not. Two semis collided on I-35 just north of the Red River and one person died; on I-10 near Beaumont a semi ran into a box truck disabled in a lane. What the federal rule says the wall between the load and the cab must hold, why that number is written for braking and not for a wreck, and what a case asks of the load.
One Word: Advisory →
The yellow number under a curve sign is not a speed limit. It is a measurement of what a car can take the curve at. What the federal sign manual says the plaque is and how it is set, what Texas law says a limit is, why a loaded truck can go over at the number posted for cars, and what the plaque does in a courtroom when the limit it does not set is the one that mattered.
The Body: Threshold →
A truck does not roll over because it was going fast. It rolls over because, for the load it was carrying, it was going fast enough. The fraction that separates the two, why a car has more than 1 g of it and a loaded van trailer as little as a quarter, the speed-squared arithmetic of a ramp, why the driver feels nothing until it is over, and what each number does in a Texas courtroom.
Dispatch: The Tall Load →
The most dangerous number on a truck is one the driver never sees: half the width of the axles over the height of the load. An 18-wheeler carrying furniture went over on Interstate 10 at the Eastex interchange before dawn Friday. What a rollover threshold is, why a van trailer full of light freight can go over at a speed a car would not notice, what the law says about the load and the curve, and what a case asks when no one was hurt this time.
One Word: Out of Service →
The three words a roadside inspector writes when a truck or a driver should not go another mile. The federal rule that makes a sticker an order, who in Texas can write it and by what criteria, what about a quarter of inspections find, and why a truck’s out-of-service record is the first thing a lawyer asks for after a wreck.
The Body: Brake Fade →
A brake is a machine for turning motion into heat, and on a long grade the hill keeps making more motion than the brakes can turn away. The arithmetic of an 80,000-pound truck on a thousand-foot descent, the temperature at which linings let go, why the engine and not the pedal is the brake on a hill, the one out-of-adjustment brake that dooms the others, and what each number does in a Texas courtroom.
Dispatch: The Long Grade →
A truck that loses its brakes on a long hill was not surprised by the hill. A semi came down El Paso’s Transmountain Road with brakes its driver said had failed, and by Wednesday police were pulling trucks over for inspection before the climb. What a brake is, where the law puts the duty before the descent, why the state builds ramps to catch what the brakes cannot, and what the case is read in.
One Word: Conspicuity →
At night a trailer is only as visible as the light it carries or gives back, and the law counts the lamps and measures the tape. The red and white strips federal law requires on a big trailer, the two lamps and two reflectors Texas requires on every trailer, and why a rider who goes into the back of one in the dark has a case about the trailer before it is about his speed.
Dispatch: The Ramp →
A loaded truck does not take a ramp the way a car does: a car in a curve slides before it tips, a loaded tractor tips before it slides, at about four tenths of gravity. The fraction that decides it, the truck rollover sign and its advisory speed, the stability control the law has required since 2017, and what each number does in a Texas courtroom.
The Body: The Air Brake →
A loaded truck does not begin to stop when the driver’s foot moves; it begins to stop when the air arrives. The half second of brake lag, the federal stopping-distance standard and the 2009 rule that cut it from 355 feet to 250, the test a truck must pass on the road, what the arithmetic means for the car ahead, why a truck that cannot stop swerves, and what each number does in a Texas courtroom.
One Word: Responsible Third Party →
The defendant who says it was not me, it was him, has a procedure for saying so, and it changes the arithmetic of the case. Who can be named, how the designation is made and struck, what the empty chair does to what the defendants pay, the unknown driver named as John Doe, why a phantom car cuts the injured person twice, and the deadline that decides whether the share the jury hands out is a share anyone pays.
One Word: Sudden Incapacity →
A driver who is unconscious cannot be careless, and a sudden loss of consciousness excuses a crash only when it could not have been foreseen. The Houston case that states the rule, the facts that make a collapse foreseeable, the lines the state draws for licensing and for commercial drivers, how the record proves it, and who pays when no one was at fault.
One Word: Offtracking →
The engineer’s word for why the back of a truck does not go where the front went. The two kinds, the federal measure of a 53-foot trailer in a right turn, the turning rules every commercial driver is trained on, the Texas statutes on the right turn, the signal and passing on the right, and how a reconstructionist proves the sweep after the fact.
Dispatch: The Wide Turn →
A trailer turning right does not stay in its lane; its rear wheels cut inside the path the cab takes, so the space beside a turning truck is about to be filled. Offtracking by the federal measure, the open side of a trailer, the right-turn and signal rules Texas writes, the side-guard gap federal law has not closed, and how the fault is divided.
One Word: Move Over →
When a patrol car, a tow truck, a road crew or a utility truck is stopped with its lights going, Texas owes it a lane or twenty miles an hour. What the statute lists, what it has cost since 2023, why a stopped vehicle is the fastest closing speed there is, and how the rule works in a civil case.
Dispatch: The Shoulder →
A trailer stopped on a dark shoulder and a piece of its load in the lane, met inside the 200 feet the headlights reach. A stopped truck owes flashers and triangles within ten minutes, the load owes a tie-down, and Texas divides the fault.
The Body: Past the Light →
Low beams light about the next 200 feet, and at highway speed a car needs more than that to stop. How far headlights really reach, the arithmetic of outrunning them, why a dark object appears so late, and how Texas divides a crash at the edge of the beam.
One Word: Hydroplane →
The other driver says he hydroplaned. What hydroplaning is, the speed and tire rules behind it, and the federal rule that trucks slow down in the rain.
One Word: Sudden Emergency →
It came out of nowhere. The instruction the other side may ask for, the condition written into it, and the argument against it when traffic stops or the road is wet.
The Body: High and Heavy →
Why a loaded tanker rolls at a speed that feels ordinary, what a partly full tank does in a turn, and why one that rolls and does not leak is engineering, not luck.
Dispatch: The Jackknife →
Brakes are the most common reason a truck is ordered off the road at inspection. A jackknife is a loss of control, and the proof lives in the carrier’s maintenance file.
The Fifth Circuit: Crane v. Penske →
The carrier at the top of a shipping chain was the driver’s statutory employer under the federal leasing rules, paperwork or not, and the broker that picked the carrier can be sued for picking badly.
Outweighed →
Why most people killed in truck crashes were in the other vehicles, and why most truckers who die were in crashes with no other vehicle.
Dispatch: The Clock →
Federal law counts a trucker’s day in hours, and the rule is addressed to the company before the driver. The log is where a driver’s exhaustion becomes the carrier’s case.
Dispatch: Shed →
A load that was never tied down becomes a fixed object in the next lane. Securing a load is a duty that reaches past the driver to the carrier and the shipper who packed it.
Dispatch: Loaded →
A tanker rollover in East Texas leaked fuel for hours. Highways carry most of the country’s hazardous cargo; the load is a second source of harm and a second source of duty.
Dispatch: Across the Highway →
A truck crossing a highway from a stop, a car under the side of its trailer, and the side underride guard no rule requires.
Dispatch: Truck Country →
Two South Texas deaths against the side of a commercial truck, the Eagle Ford numbers, and the pages that explain why a car loses to a truck.
Underride →
The physics of a car going under a trailer, and the guard standards meant to stop it.
Deblading →
Tire tread and belt separation on a rig, and why it is a documents case.
Spoliation →
What happens when a defendant lets the evidence disappear, and how the law answers.
Closing Speed →
Why the speeds add in a head-on, and why a truck closing the distance is a different order of harm.
Common Questions
How are truck accident cases different from car accidents?
They are governed by federal trucking regulations, they usually involve a company defendant with more resources and its own investigators, and the key evidence sits inside the truck and the carrier's files. That evidence can be overwritten quickly, so acting fast matters more than in an ordinary car wreck.
Who can be held responsible besides the driver?
Often the trucking company itself, for the driver's on-the-job conduct and for its own negligence in hiring, training, supervision, or maintenance. Depending on the facts, a cargo loader, a maintenance contractor, or a parts manufacturer may also share responsibility.
What should I do to protect a truck accident claim?
Get medical care, and get a lawyer involved quickly so a preservation letter can go out before the electronic logs, engine data, and dashcam footage are lost. The first days are when the most important evidence is either secured or gone.
Tell me what happened.
Free consultation. No fees unless we win. Speak with me directly, not a screener.
Contact Orlando Rodriguez