Orlando Rodriguez Trial Lawyer · Houston
Practice Areas

Truck & 18-Wheelers.

Eighty thousand pounds does not have accidents. It has causes, and I find them.

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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.
Learn more →
Underride Accidents
When a car slides beneath a trailer, the results are catastrophic. Guards are required, and often missing or inadequate.
Learn more →
Black Box & ELD Data
The truck records what the driver will not admit. Preserving that data early can decide the case.
Learn more →
Trucking Company Liability
The company that hired, trained, and dispatched the driver is often the real defendant, with the real resources.
Learn more →
From The Night Docket

The physics and the proof behind these wrecks, from my writing desk:

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

(713) 239-2300