Before you call.

A truck wreck is a case against a company, and the company usually starts working the day of the crash. Here is what I would tell you about the calls I get most, including the ones that are not for me.

Someone from the trucking company or its insurer already called me and wants a statement or a signature.

That is the rapid-response team, and it exists to shape the story early. You are not required to give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurer, and you should not sign anything, including a medical authorization, until someone who works for you has read it.

The evidence that decides these cases, the electronic logs, the engine data, the dashcam, the driver file, lives with the company and can be overwritten in the ordinary course of business within weeks. A preservation letter from a lawyer is what stops that.

A case, and an urgent one.

Read Black Box and ELD Data and, in Spanish, En boca cerrada no entran moscas. Then tell me about it before you talk to them again.

A commercial truck hit me, my injuries were minor, and they already paid for my car.

Minor is a word that changes over a month. Pain that starts a week later is common, and a police report that says no injury means only that nobody was bleeding at the scene.

The two-year clock in Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003 runs from the crash. Accepting a property-damage payment does not release the injury claim unless the paper you signed says so; read it.

Worth a conversation if you have treated or are still hurting. If the injury truly resolved in days, probably not a case, and that is fine.

Read Wired to Move on why the hurt person says I am fine at the scene. Check what you signed.

I am the truck driver, and I was hurt on the job.

Then the answer depends on your employer. If it carries workers’ compensation, your claim against the employer runs through that system, and the question becomes whether someone other than your employer caused the wreck. If it opted out, you can sue it directly.

Texas Labor Code Section 406.033 strips a non-subscribing employer of the defenses that blame the worker. A third-party claim against another driver, a shipper, or a maintenance contractor survives either way.

Often a case, on one of those two tracks.

Read Non-Subscriber Work Injury and Third-Party Claims. Benefits questions go to the Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation.

The trucking company is from another state, or the driver was, and I do not know who to sue.

That is normal. Interstate carriers are registered with the federal government and are sued where the crash happened. The hard part is not finding them; it is finding every company in the chain, the carrier, the broker, the shipper, the owner of the trailer, before the paper trail goes cold.

A crash in Texas is a Texas case. The federal safety regulations that govern the carrier are evidence in it.

A case, and the chain of companies is where it is won.

Read Trucking Company Liability and Statutory Employer. You can buy the crash report from TxDOT crash report purchase (CR-3) while you wait.

A truck pulled across the highway in front of me, or came out of a driveway, and I hit its trailer. The other side says I had time to stop.

The call sounds the same both times. A tractor-trailer, or a dump truck, or a utility truck was crossing from a stop or turning out of a driveway; the trailer laid across the lane like a wall; you came over a rise or around a curve and the side of that trailer was where the road was supposed to be. Their carrier is already telling you the trailer was in the intersection first, so the right of way was theirs, and you just did not brake in time.

The driver who enters or crosses a highway from a stop owes you a plain duty. Texas Transportation Code Section 545.153 says an operator approaching a stop-sign intersection, after stopping, shall yield the right-of-way to a vehicle approaching so closely as to be an immediate hazard, and a driver who runs a yield sign into a collision is prima facie negligent. Right of way is not the verdict. Who held it opens the case; it does not close it, which is why Failure to Yield exists. The other half of the case is the trailer itself. A side underride guard is a feasible, unmandated safeguard the industry can build and no rule makes it install, and NHTSA said in 2023 there is still no federal side-guard requirement even as 89 deaths and 409 serious injuries a year happen to people in cars that go under the side of one. In Texas that gap is evidence a jury may weigh, which is what Voluntary explains, and Guard collects what the agencies have said about it. Fault still gets divided under Section 33.001, but a share of your own does not end the case unless it passes half.

Usually a case when the truck came from a stop or a driveway and you had the through lane, because the statute puts the duty to yield on that driver. A share of fault for your own speed or lookout divides recovery under Section 33.001; it does not erase it until it passes fifty percent, and the trailer itself is separately in the case where a feasible side guard was absent.

Read Across the Highway and Inches of Steel on why the height of a trailer decides so much, then tell me about it. If the truck belongs to a company with an interstate operating authority, the black box and the driver logs live on the truck for a limited time; the truck wrecks page covers the letter that goes out to preserve them.

The driver seemed exhausted, but the company says his log is clean.

A clean log is the company’s first exhibit. It is not the last word. Federal law caps a trucker’s day, 11 hours of driving inside a 14-hour window that opens only after 10 hours off, and it puts the duty on the company first: “no motor carrier shall permit or require any driver used by it to drive” past those limits (49 CFR 395.3). The electronic log records what the driver entered and what the truck did. The company also has to keep the paper that checks it.

The regulation lists that paper: bills of lading and itineraries, dispatch and trip records, expense receipts, the messages sent through the company’s fleet management system, and payroll and settlement sheets (49 CFR 395.11). A log that says the driver was resting can sit next to a fuel receipt or a dispatch message that says otherwise. The company only has to keep the logs and those documents for six months (49 CFR 395.8), which is why the preservation letter goes out early. One honest caution: an hours violation is not automatic fault. The fatigue still has to be tied to the crash.

Often still a case. A clean log is a claim to test against the company’s own records, not a finding.

Read The Clock, Logbook, and Respondeat Superior.

An 18-wheeler jackknifed in front of me, and the company says the road was wet.

Wet pavement is a reason to slow down, not an excuse. Texas measures a safe speed by the conditions actually present, not by the number on the sign (Transportation Code Section 545.351). A jackknife is a loss of control, and the questions are whether the truck was going too fast for that road and whether its brakes could do what the road required.

Federal law puts the maintenance on the company: every motor carrier must “systematically inspect, repair, and maintain ... all motor vehicles ... subject to its control” (49 CFR 396.3). Brakes are the most common reason inspectors order a truck off the road; in this year’s North American inspection blitz, brake problems of every kind were 39.1 percent of the vehicle violations that took a truck out of service (CVSA). The proof is the company’s maintenance file and inspection reports, and a preservation letter is what keeps them. One honest caution: weather is real, and Texas divides the fault among everyone who played a part, including your own speed and following distance if they mattered.

Often a case against the company as well as the driver. The weather goes to how the fault is divided, not to whether there is a case.

Read The Jackknife, Inspection, and Squared.